


in our nest of larks (has come a viper)

by abrawmclaren



Category: Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blood and Violence, Darth Vader Lives, Darth Vader Redemption, Force Bond (Star Wars), Multi, Sith Code
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-28
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2019-11-07 04:42:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 32,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17953808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abrawmclaren/pseuds/abrawmclaren
Summary: Darth Vader has survived the Battle of Endor.





	1. bone of her bone

**Author's Note:**

> I'm planning on getting fairly deep with this. Lots of descriptions about the extent of Vader's wounds, political headcanon, and several connections to what will eventually happen to the Skywalker legacy in the Sequel Trilogy -- were Vader to have lived. 
> 
> Tags will be added as I go. I'll update more if there's interest, so feedback is v v appreciated!

After Endor, Leia cuts her hair.

She gathers the auburn-blonde in one shaking hand, head pulsing with something of a headache after whatever primitive swill the Ewoks make and which she drank with abandon, and uses a crude blade to divest herself of opulence. The Alderaanian style is akin to that of the Naboo; so closely it reminds her of a mother she never knew but of whom she was a part. A history she wishes to forget before ever learning.

"You changed your hair" Luke chuckles when he sees her, both of them bathed in the pale light of dawn. He looks older. New lines fan out beneath his eyes, touching either side of his mouth. Perhaps a trick of that ethereal light; perhaps a waning effect of destiny. His, not hers. Never hers.

"Is he alive?" She asks, condescending, and does not hide the judgmental edge of her tone, all pretense gone as she allows herself to dwell in a raw, amorphous anger. "It was foolish not to transport him to Polis Massa; Coruscant even, under the cover of darkness. He just had to go to an Alliance ship, didn't he?"

And the _Redemption_ , while staffed adequately enough to replace Luke's hand, was far afield from the technological outfitting necessary to keep Darth Vader alive, let alone to treat his injuries. It is for practical reasons, at least this is the way Leia must justify this, that she is vehemently opposed to the now-deposed Dark Lord being in residence on an Alliance frigate.

Luke is calm; a far cry from the moisture-sucking Tatooine farmboy who had blown up the first Death Star; the Savior of the Alliance, they're calling him.

"He will be carefully watched" he offers in reply. Leia scoffs.

"He's a Sith Lord."

"You weren't there" he counters softly. "He saved me. From the Emperor; he wouldn't have done that if he hadn't found his way back to the Light."

 _Were it so simple._ Leia can only stand and seethe.

There are so many things she wishes she could say, but he is her brother; her naive, hopeful brother, determined to make a hero from a tyrant.

"I'm going to the _Redemption_. You're right; the Alliance doesn't have the capacity to adequately care for him, and that includes security. Coruscant is too dangerous, but Polis Massa -"

"Is in the Outer Rim. There's time. I want him off that ship."

Luke is crestfallen, but nods.

In the moments before the sun rose, as they stood together on the Sanctuary Moon (a misnomer, as there was only the appearance of sanctuary here), Luke says quietly, sounding more like that farmboy "He's your father, too. You must learn to accept this."

Leia accepts many things. She accepts that Luke is a Jedi and her brother; she accepts Alderaan's ultimate fate as a pawn in a grander game. She accepts Han and his swaggering hubris, his unfairly plump lips, the cocky flyboy affect laced with a sweet kindness an orphan shouldn't know. She accepts many untold truths, but not this. Never this.

Her twin is gone before she can reply, and it would only be from anger. Anger directed toward the Empire, but anger for her brother as well. And in this brave, new world, there is no time for anger. So Leia holds it within herself, a gift to allow the latitude to move forward - but she finds that she cannot. Not while _he_ is alive.

She leaves Endor behind later than expected. Han goes to Tatooine to satisfy the last of his debt, and her rage is the only other passenger on her journey to Yavin IV.


	2. winds its way 'round beating breast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Luke observes the cruel reality of his father's subservience to the Emperor. 
> 
> Under better circumstances, a well-meaning imposition in this moment would have been a welcome distraction. Now, it is just an argument of philosophy; and perhaps, finally, a way forward.

Hung suspended and limbless in a bacta tank, Darth Vader is far from menacing. The irony of both father and son having used the same tank to heal from their injuries is not lost on the Jedi; it is Luke's hope that the Sith will survive, but perhaps his death, while harrowing, would make whatever happens next easier. Leia is furious with him, but her consternation is temporary. A politician at heart, she will soon adjust to discover the purpose behind keeping Vader alive. It is not as vainglorious a thing as she had thought; indeed, the second-most powerful figure in the Empire and commandant of its navy is a valuable asset.

He is pitiful now, but still dangerous. When Luke hesitantly reaches through the Force to peruse the catalog of Vader's mind, he comes away with nothing but an aimless, floating scroll of basic sensations - but nothing more. As though his father were a non-sentient, single-celled life form and not a human being; if that is ever what he was to begin with.

A 21-B series med droid comes as close to a sigh as it can behind him.

"We lack the necessary equipment for long-term treatment, sir. He will need to transfer care to a more capable facility."

"I understand."

"Many of his injuries are old and not easily tended. The collapsed trachea, however, can be corrected with an implant. I am able to do that much when he is stable. A respirator, while crude, can afford him both the ability to breathe and phonate until more permanent apparatuses can be installed. These are rudimentary and temporary measures."

"Can it be done prior to our arrival at Polis Massa?"

"Yes, sir. Though his heart rate will need to decrease by ten beats per minute if he is to maximize chances of survival."

"Then do so. Now leave us."

The droid complies, and Luke is left alone with Vader. Father.

Luke regards the panel showing his vital statistics. The resting heart rate, while high, was indicative of trauma; Vader's vital organs were functioning below acceptable levels, but that too could be attributed to the damage his life-support suit sustained during Palpatine's onslaught of Force Lightning.

Not to mention that those vital organs had previously sustained damage that would have killed a lesser man.

But this is the result: a sculpted torso of thick muscle, defined in odd places and asymmetrical from musculature grown under and around the winding scars of his chest. Broad shoulders, the v-shaped back of a laborer, remarkably vital quadriceps. Even in the bacta tank, Luke can see where Vader's suit was improperly fitted so that it left angry, open wounds where the vacuum-sealed locks pinched his flesh. Vader's neck was haloed by one such ring; either side of his mouth, a permanent snarl from additional scarring, boasted small pinpricks created by the constant prodding of sensors inside of the infamous three-piece helmet. All of that great weight bearing down on his neck; no wonder his head was lolling to the side. He lacked the strength to hold it aloft of his own accord. It occurs to Luke that his father must have had to consume a nearly-constant supply of nutrients to sustain the strength to wear the armor; it both imprisoned him, demanded of him, and kept him alive.

Was there no end to Paplatine's cruelty?

"It doesn't matter that he was cruel; it matters that your father shared and reveled in that cruelty."

 _Ben._ The blue-lined Force apparition had not manifested himself since a rather candid conversation on Dagobah. In truth, Luke knew that the Jedi Master would come to call. Luke was not prepared to entertain another such conversation. This is the only time since his confrontation on the Death Star that he takes leave of his patience.

"I told you then, and I will tell you now: I cannot murder my father."

"And what of him? Did he not murder, did he not terrorize, desecrate, and defile the galaxy for two decades? Why prolong his death?"

As loathe as he was to admit it, Luke did know a thing or two about politics - especially in wartime, and especially how the conspirators of war crimes fared in judicial proceedings. It was not good. The young Jedi's stomach flipped in anticipation of the Senate meetings and Alliance negotiations during which he would be asked why he saved Darth Vader, and there were no answers. Not yet.

"It must be death" Kenobi confirms, his mouth a straight, thin line. He walks toward the bacta tank, placing one ethereal hand on the surface of the transparisteel. "He was beautiful, once. This is the first time I have seen him without the helmet since -"

"Mustafar. I have access to holorecordings. I've seen them all." Luke drops the kindly Jedi pretense he employed with his sister. As time passed, Luke came to the realization that the Jedi Order was as much to blame for his father's Fall as Anakin Skywalker himself. Ben supported antiquated ideologies that, had Luke ignored his instincts and not gone to Bespin, would secured at least Han's death. Perhaps not Leia's, and that is what Ben is lording over Luke now: Darth Vader never would have killed Leia. If the master of the dark had been true to his Sith Code, he would have gladly watched his Emperor slowly torture and eventually kill Luke. That he didn't tells the young Jedi two things: he had been right to quit Yoda's company when he had, and that Han had been worth saving. He never would have murdered his own daughter, and by that point, Vader had to have known her significance.

"You are too much like him."

There is no arguing that point. Even at just twenty-three galactic standard years old, he knows that the similarities of father and son are exactly why he worked so hard to save the Sith in the first place. Luke offers no rebuttal.

"He left you because you did not trust him. Not really. He gave you few reasons to do so outside of his heroism during the Clone Wars, but the Order met no man - Sensitive or not - halfway."

Ben turns from the bacta tank, his back facing Vader. Luke finds it oddly symbolic.

"Our way of life had been threatened for thousands of years, Luke. Did you not learn of Vitiate? Of the Sith Empire, or the academy on Korriban? Can you imagine such a fate for the galaxy now?"

Luke stills. He had eaten what information he could find like an emaciated orphan given gruel for the first time in days. The name 'Vitiate' sparks a newfound fear with him, but a moment of reflection quiets his mind once more. The flares of misgiving are infrequent now, and dismissed with meditation found only in the fluidity of the Force. But Vitiate was what Luke considered true evil - able to squeeze the Force from every blade of grass on an entire planet for his own morbid promotion is an irreconcilable horror.

Darth Vader's sins had been different. He wouldn't know if and until the mangled Sith awoke, and there was still the risk that his father would see a second opportunity to resume his nefarious interests and ascend to reigning Dark Lord of the Sith.

"Did you ever think that, if he was as devoted to my mother as you have said, that he could have found peace married to her and a Jedi simultaneously?"

"Attachments are just as good as Turning."

"You're wrong" Luke bites. "You're wrong, and I can prove it. If he lives, the Alliance will keep him alive just for the information he can and hopefully will provide. When they have no further use for him -"

Ben's blue-glowing shoulders slump, and Luke is amazed by the life-like crinkle in his robes that causes. The elder Master has never been a supporter of Luke's cockeyed optimism, and right now, even Luke knows that he's being naive. But he has to hope, and he has to keep pressing forward wherever this path lead. Something had to be salvaged in his father; something had to be _good_.

"Luke, it is bad enough that you left Dagobah before you were ready. But to believe that your father could return to the Light is, frankly, irresponsible. You are putting at risk the lives of the breadth of the Alliance because" the old man swallows, doubtless working through his own painfully complex grief "you need your father. I - I needed him too, Luke. He could not separate himself from the Force, and I know that would have been your suggestion. Anakin Skywalker _is_ the Force."

It is this admission that had served as the wedge which ultimately drove Anakin and Obi-Wan apart. Skywalker's identity as the Chosen One had vexed, offended, and pained many a Jedi Master; this much is evident in what little Luke was able to find and read on the subject, let alone the questionable diatribes Yoda's fever dreams caused in those final nights on Dagobah.

The former moisture farmer turned Jedi squares his shoulders, sets his jaw in defiance. "The Order was destroyed not by my father, but by fear. Fear of what would have happened had an unprecedented marriage was allowed to be brought to light; had a man set aside by the Force Itself to exact balance been empowered to do just that. It was all fear, and it was for fear of losing the only Jedi trained since the Clone Wars that you begged me to stay on Dagobah."

Ben cast one more look over his shoulder at the man - Darth Vader, Anakin Skywalker, whomever he was - and turned to Luke. The younger Jedi was struck silent as he placed both cool, otherworldly hands on Luke's shoulders.

"Do you think that I don't consider myself complicit?"

"It's more than that; it's fault."

Ben averts his eyes and seems to be addressing the floor beneath them. "His scars are my scars; his Fall is my Fall. The Order knew this, and Yoda knew this. The choices we - I - hoped you would make were bastions of another time. Perhaps the new iteration of the Order you create will succeed where ours failed."

Luke knew that this was as close to an apology as he would ever receive.

His father would know that Ben was sorry; that Ben had failed him.

If he lived, he would know.

The balance of the hours prior to arriving at Polis Massa were spent in silence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have always felt that Obi-Wan would hold Luke's actions against him even in the canon, and their difference of opinion as to whether or not Darth Vader had any good left in him would continue to be a point of contention. I would even go so far as to say that Luke's frustration with the 'old' Jedi Order was what disillusioned him to such an extent in the sequel trilogy. The seeds of that dissension were planted after Endor regardless, but with Vader alive in this AU, that disconnect between Obi-Wan and Luke is accelerated.
> 
> These chapters are about to get longer; I promise!


	3. silently prodding with forked tongue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A brief interlude in which Han learns about Leia's parentage, and the former Alderaanian princess takes a long, hard look into the scrying mirror.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Leia's 'Darth Vader Was My Dad But We're Not Talking About It' headcanon for this AU. A portrait of the birth of a struggle.

The wheels of bureaucracy turn slowly. It's just as well for Leia, who delivers her report to Mon Mothma and leaves to allow the rest of the Alliance to fight a battle for _her_ rather than what has happened in the most recent past. Where Leia would normally find herself beholden to endless strategy meetings and high-level logistical planning sessions, she lets a surprised Mon Mothma know that she will not be participating in those discussions - not yet.

Nor does Leia divulge her parentage. Not that it matters; the information that Vader is alive rests at the highest security clearance. Three people know: Leia, Mon Mothma, and Luke. But it will not be this way for long, and eventually integrity must champion the day. For the first time in her life, Leia finds herself struggling against the notion of telling the truth.

Han is something like peace right now; at least he cares for her and, in spite of herself, she cares for him. He left Endor the morning she had spoken with Luke, softly kissing her brow and burying whispered secrets in her hair. She'd been awake to hear the things he said; pretty things, but profound; about how it would be different, with his debt gone and a life with the Alliance - and hopefully, if she would have him, with Han.

And so, in the mornings following her arrival, Leia would begin with tea and a datapad. Most of the galaxy assumed that the Empire was on its way out; several Moffs had gone missing with their Star Destroyers. Most were presumed dead, but there had been whispers of others seeking refuge in the Unknown Regions. Locating and capturing high-ranking Imperial officers would be the next priority; rebuilding the Senate one tired piece of legislation at a time would take years, and Leia had already been asked (and rejected) a Senate seat. Who would she represent? The thought made her blood run cold.

She's angry with Luke, of course; gone off on some crusade to save the man who nearly succeeded in wiping out the Alliance and throwing the galaxy into a years-long battle for power and resources.

Leia finds it almost impossible to ignore the voice in her head that tells her how much Luke loves her; that he's doing this for her, for both of them.

How? How is this man, this _thing_ , her father? This murderous villain, part of a tradition so dark and demented that anything concerning the Sith had been outlawed and destroyed before the Clone Wars. It is unconscionable.

And yet -

And yet the thoughts remain. The silent beckoning to open her mind, cloying in its insistence and deafening for how loud that entreaty has become, an ever-present plea (does it come from the Force? Would Luke know?) to open her heart.

Han returns and interrupts her during one such morning.

"Hey" he offers weakly, and Leia runs to him without a word.

"Whoa, what's wrong? You should be celebrating twofold now; Jabba's dead, my debts are paid. The Empire is -"

"Han, don't. Just hold me."

So he does. For three mornings, Leia talks to him about literally anything else. For three mornings, they make love enough to account for the time they lost and have reclaimed for each other.

On the third morning, Leia takes a sip of caf and tells him over the stone rim of her mug "Luke saved Darth Vader. He's alive."

Leia counts thirty-two heartbeats before Han answers.

"Where is he?" The boyish lilt in his voice is gone; this is General Solo, not Han. Leia has come to learn that these are indeed two different men; the General is who she needs right now.

"Luke is escorting him to Polis Massa on the _Redemption_. Due to the security clearance required, we won't know the success of the medical intervention required to keep Vader alive until he and Luke are here."

Han takes a large, scalding gulp of caf.

"What in the nine hells was that fool kid thinking?"

Leia shakes her head, suddenly profoundly fatigued. "He's - our father, Han." The words hurt to say; she feels bile rise in her throat.

"The kid told me." Luke is always 'the kid' or 'the farmboy' when Luke does something to upset Han. "I put two and two together after you told me that he's your brother. I just - I can't picture it. That beastly thing sired children; unbelievable. And _you_ are nothing like him" he says, furiously trying to show that he was not impressed with Luke's heroics, but that he certainly _did_ want to be supportive even though he's so painfully far from understanding

_love me love me love me. love this orphan who believed and believes in you. in our cause. it's mine now, too._

Han takes her to bed. His ministrations are a successful distraction, but in the back of her mind lives a presence - whether Luke or Vader or both she does not know, but it is a steady, pleading ache that is not her own. It's a promise and a damning; a comfort and a horror. She does not know why, but she finds herself as drawn to this sensation as she is to the burgeoning love between she and Han.

The smuggler holds her in the mid-morning light, lightly snoring in what is probably the first wink of true sleep he's had in weeks. Leia carefully untangles herself without waking him, and goes out to the veranda to watch the traffic of Alliance pilots and technicians below.

She is not trained the way Luke is; her abilities are raw and unformed, but she attempts to reach across the space that separates them to settle into his mind as he has hers.

In reply, she feels lonely. Isolated; misunderstood. These must be reflections of Luke's own emotions, and Leia bursts into tears.

She is not a weak woman, so where this came from only the stars know. Han wanders out onto the veranda, wearing nothing but the trademark black cargo vest and blue trousers with a Corellian blood stripe. He looks oddly at home; comfortable. Leia wonders if this is how non-Sensitive beings live. Never knowing the currents that could sweep them away otherwise.

"What's wrong?" He's almost exasperated, but he's a curiously patient man for one so cocky.

"I was too hard on Luke. We spoke the morning you left, and he told me about Vader."

"Wait, he's not expecting you to go along with this idea, is he?"

Leia sighs. "It's - he thinks that there is still good in our father, and if that's the case then it will be twice as difficult to forgive him. I want to, Han. Gods, how I want to. But Luke –"

"Needs closure, too."

Sometimes he says the perfect thing at just the right moment. She kisses him, soft and grateful. He returns the kiss in earnest before wandering back inside. Distantly, Leia hears the 'fresher turn on; he has meetings to attend. General Solo - it's still new to her, this version of the man she met a small handful of years ago.

She will follow him eventually; there are meetings with Mon Mothma she can no longer postpone. There are stacks of flimsis awaiting her perusal; and there's a Senate seat she wants but has not yet brought herself to accept.

And there's a father who may die, and a brother who may be forever changed if he does; there's a galaxy to salvage and heal, and that work can only begin when she is ready to face her roots, accept her role in it all.

Leia Organa makes a promise: she will never be weak again.


	4. nowhere to fly from their silent observer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The procedure to save Darth Vader begins, and a powerful figure from the past of Anakin Skywalker returns during a desperate hour.

Luke jerks awake, the time display on the chrono in the rudimentary living quarters on the _Redemption_ glowing a disconcerting 0240.

Returning to consciousness has not been an easy feat since the definitive battle above (and on) Endor. Primarily, he has meditated to rest; it is only since leaving Endor and Leia that his body sent strong signals that he required sleep.

And after Ben's appearance in the med bay, and the disturbing conversation which followed, Luke couldn't sustain himself on meditation alone. Maybe this made him a poor imitation of a Jedi Master, but he was still a man of flesh and bone.

He liberates himself from the thin blanket that had covered him, and pulls on the set of clean clothes left behind by the service droid who had shown him to his quarters. The black uniform, which had been his own creation, had since been cleaned, mended, and placed in his quarters. Luke eyes it dubiously, but ultimately decides to change into the flowing black tunic and dark gray trousers, tucked into standard-issue black matte mid-calf boots. A glance in the mirror confirmed that he looked less like a Jedi or a soldier; here, now, he was just a man. And he hadn't realized how desperate he'd been to feel some semblance of normality until then.

His comm signals an incoming transmission just as he clips his lightsaber - an ever-present if not wholly necessary implement for his surroundings - to his belt.

"Master Luke, we are approximately ten orbital minutes from docking at Polis Massa. The patient has been prepped and is ready for transport."

"Thank you, Captain Sintos. I will meet you in the facility."

Luke sensed a flood of confusion. "Sir, I had assumed that you would rendezvous with Alliance high command on Yavin IV. We have received several transmissions -"

"They can wait."

Skywalker had served with Captain Sinto many times, and they had developed something of a casual friendship. Emboldened to assert himself but unwilling to sound dictatorial, Luke sighs and adds "I am responsible for Lord Vader, and I am the only person prepared to contain him should the worst happen. Please send my apologies to Mon Mothma and inform her that I will be in contact when Lord Vader is stable."

Sinto's emotions stabilize, and he replies "Very well, sir." The comm clicks and the transmission ends, and Luke - without any preconceived notions, expectations, or a vague hint of hope - walks through the doors of his quarters and debarks the _Redemption_.

* * *

****

Polis Massa is far enough in the Outer Rim that the technological advances since his birth had not been noteworthy, but this was the closest medical facility to Endor - and Luke had hoped that, should Vader awaken and realize where and with whom he was, it would serve as a balm for what had come to pass since.

He isn't fool enough to think that the loss of the Emperor and what had been his life's work would be lost under the imposition of the Light, but he was prepared to discuss those things - at least, he had prepared himself for this possibility as much as could be expected.

When Luke saw Han standing in the waiting area, all of his plans stuck like barbs in his ribs.

"Why'd you do it?" The rogue, the scoundrel who believed nothing when it came to the Force but who had chosen their band of rebels to create some facsimile of the family he never had, did not look at Luke with the contempt he would have expected. He genuinely wanted to know.

"He's my father."

"And?"

"And he's valuable for what he knows, and what he would be able to provide to the Alliance."

Han combs a hand through his shaggy hair. "I know that your intentions are to use him, and I agree that the information he could provide would be valuable. I just - Leia" he breathes her name like a prayer. "I don't know what to tell her. I don't know how to comfort her. She's angry, Luke."

Luke doesn't know what to say either; beyond the transparisteel window into the surgical theater, the robotic arms above the operating table are assisted by four med droids to begin what would be several hours of intense and potentially life-threatening work. As the arms gently liberate the old prosthetics from their sockets, another pumps painkiller, anxiety, and numbing agents into the man known as Darth Vader. Another droid scrubs the wounds clean; the recently-implanted larynx and respirator hum - Luke can hear them, the only indication that his father is alive.

"We can't accomplish anything sitting here waiting. Come back with me."

"I can't leave him" Luke admits with no small amount of emotion clogging his throat. "I can't abandon him. This is where he lost his wife - my mother - he'll feel that when he wakes up. He'll be alone."

Han Solo is sometimes capable of profound insights; this moment proves a grand example.

"Tell me how he was there for you these past twenty-three years, kid. Let the droids do their work."

A security team is stationed outside to ensure transport of the deposed Sith Lord, and a detail of stormtroopers had been captured and mobilized to protect both the citizens who came into contact with and Darth Vader himself. There was no need, truly, for Luke to be here beyond the admittedly irrational demands of his own conscience, but Han had a point.

Where _had_ Anakin Skywalker been?

Luke has no answers. Silence envelopes them once again; Han, surprisingly, doesn't leave.

****

* * *

****

****

****

_I am alive?_

__

How? Luke?

Reach out to me. Feel what you have set alight inside of me; the dispelling of this darkness that had swallowed my love for you, for your mother, for your sister.

I killed and maimed for love of the Emperor. I hate -

I hate and hate and hate and hate

Come back, Luke. Do not leave me.

I can feel her here; this is where you came into the world, screaming and beautiful. And I was gone. Lost.

I still hate. Help me fight it. I am weak.

Luke

Luke

Luke

****

* * *

****

****

****

He falls asleep, at some point. Han is still there, still somehow awake. Stormtroopers line the corridors, prepared to stand vigil over a body whether it is living or dead.

The chrono reads 1350.

The transparisteel windows have tinted; the procedure is not fit to be observed in its entirety. Even murderers deserve dignity, it seems.

"Kid? Luke!"

"What" he growls, rubbing his eyes with balled fists.

"It's been ten hours. If he wasn't going to live, we would have known by now. A detachment from Yavin IV is here - someone who introduced herself to me as an old friend of Vader's. Says her name's Ahsoka."

His father's _padawan_. Here?

She is blue-skinned and deadly, but her voice is soft and kind. Luke hasn't yet left the realm of sleep when she slowly shuffles into the room, and suddenly everything is too bright; too real.

"Master Skywalker; I'm Ahsoka Tano."

Her name is familiar to him, as he had read most of the dossiers regarding Anakin's earlier life in the Jedi Order - at least, as much as he could find. Tano had been tried and subsequently expelled from the Jedi Order, barely escaping Coruscant with her life. She had been cited twice and captured by Vader once; curiously, she had been allowed to live, although the details of that decision were not divulged in the documents Luke had managed to find. That she was here now indicated that perhaps Vader had subverted the Emperor and let Tano live out of spite; and perhaps something else.

"Thank you for coming. I assume you were sent here to command the detachment responsible for bringing him to Yavin."

Tano nods, her lekku shaking nervously. "I am. Mon Mothma sent me with a message: you are to return to Yavin IV. Don't worry, Master; he will be kept safe, and contained should the worst happen."

"Told you, kid" Han mutters, adjusting the blaster holster hanging loosely from his hips. "Let the Jedi do her work."

"I thought you were dead" Luke blurts out before he can stop himself. Ahsoka only smiles.

"I've been exiled in the Unknown Regions for some time. Learned a thing or two about staying alive and out of the Empire's way after the last time Ani - Darth Vader - captured and interrogated me."

Luke motions for everyone save for Tano and himself to leave the room. Han obliges after rolling his eyes.

"I apologize for the candor of the question, but why did he let you live?"

Ahsoka schools a look of surprise. "We were bonded. He knew, I think, what was going to happen to the Death Star. The Emperor. He was exhausted; when he interrogated me, he let his mental shielding down just enough for me to look inside - he was, probably still is, the walking dead. That you took him here" she gestures, and Luke feels a pang of guilt surge through him "will bring that point home. Maybe it will make him docile and cooperative."

"Here's to hoping. Mon Mothma -"

"She thinks you're too close to him; that your judgment will be clouded since you're his son. It's a measure to keep both of you safe - to say nothing of what might happen when he is fully conscious. There have been Sith who turn back to the Light, but it is such a rarity; there's nowhere in the galaxy he can be held while he processes that change. A face from his past might help, or it might hinder; but he has to face what he became first before he can look toward what he could become."

Someone else in the galaxy knows his father better than his own son, and this is equal parts saddening and gratifying. Luke trusts Mon Mothma; but Ahsoka possessed a gem that Luke had only glimpsed aboard the Death Star in what he thought were his father's final moments.

Jealousy is unbecoming a Jedi, but he allows himself to dwell in it regardless.

"He will know that you were here, Master Skywalker. I'll see to that."

And it's all he can do to walk out, Han's blunt nails digging into the meat of his underarm.

When he pulls away from the _Redemption_ and sets the jump in the navicomputer for Yavin IV, Luke experiences a random and true feeling of peace for the first time since before he left Tatooine.

He hopes that this is not a reflection of his own staggering hold on reality as exhaustion overwhelms him, and the blue swirl of hyperspace lulls him into something that isn't quite sleep and not entirely consciousness.

****

* * *

****

****

****

Han is too lean, Leia thinks, as he steps off from the _Falcon's_ landing platform and jogs to greet she and Chewie. He was never one to have much of an appetite, but in the waning days of the Empire, she had only seen him eat a handful of times. Dehydrated Ewok mystery meat didn't count. Why she is suddenly seized with worry over something comparatively trivial is a mystery to her, but she does love Han - that he lives and lives well is important to her. She can't remember the exact moment when his well-being was a priority, but now it blazes across the expanse of her still-white hot anger with Luke and the apprehension of another day full of meetings.

"Where is he?"

"He left Polis Massa when I did. I imagine he'll be here before the day's end."

Leia nods; they walk back to their shared quarters (Han was assigned his own, but Chewie has been its only occupant) and drop.

"How did he look?"

Han lights a cigarra laced with spice; Leia's least favorite habit of his. He could be discharged from the Alliance for even being near spice let alone imbibing it, but - he deserves the disconnection.

"Like a dead man."

"No" Leia says, frustrated, as Han exhales a plume of smoke "I was talking about Luke."

"The answer doesn't change" the smuggler mutters darkly. "He's in an impossible situation, and he knows that you're livid. Is he supposed to be frolicking through fields of flowers?"

Leia shoots up from the banquette with a speed that startled Han. "He's _supposed_ to be here. Attending the same meetings I am; fielding the same questions I am. He's left me here with nothing but empty promises that everything will be all right, and nothing concrete -"

"If you're this upset about a political prisoner whose life was spared for the information he could provide, how could you think that it's different than anything you've done for the Alliance?"

Leia stills. _Bastard_.

"How dare you."

Han takes another drag of the cigarra. "This may not be the answer you want, but we have to wait. And we have to trust Luke."

As much as she despises him - both of them - in this moment, Han is right.

With nothing but time on their hands as they await Luke's arrival, Leia reviews a flimsi while Han takes his cigarra and his poorly-timed pearls of truth out to the _Falcon_ \- where he proceeded to sleep alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't seem to let go of the relationship between Anakin and Ahsoka, so I've inserted her into this story as well. Relevant tags will be added. SORRY NOT SORRY.
> 
> I'm also of the opinion that Han and Leia were somewhat doomed from the beginning - Leia falls in and out of love with him simultaneously, which sets them up for a rocky parenting partnership with Ben (Kylo). All of this subtext is important for future chapters, so enjoy my awkwardly hashing it out.


	5. feathers scattered on the breeze

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darth Vader comes to Yavin IV. 
> 
> This goes exactly the way Luke thought - and hoped - it wouldn't.

After fifteen hours of intensive surgery, the official record showed the Lord Darth Vader - otherwise known as Anakin Skywalker - had been rebuilt. More than that, the official record showed that he lived, and would continue to do so provided that a strict regimen of nutritional and rehabilitative intervention was observed. One new lung; two legs, two cybernetic arms which were connected to the centers of his brain which controlled movement. Technology that should have recreated him after Mustafar, but that was not the lesson his then-master wanted him to learn. He had accepted the suit, and learned to modify it for some modicum of comfort; but he had never been enamored of its technology, so far beneath what the Imperial Surgery Center had been capable of creating. Palpatine had wanted him to suffer, and suffer he had - but no more.

Boots that weren't raked; he could stand on his own two feet without undue and constant adjustment lest he fall forward; the lack of discomfort was strange, as unknown to him as the furthest reaches of Wild Space. He can touch the implant under synthetic skin to cover most of the scarring from his burns - feel the way the sub-cutaneous respirator moved inside of him. It is a new sensation, to breathe freely - or as freely as his broken body will allow. The droids tell him this will improve, given time.

And then he realizes that he is only breathing long enough to be damned, and the joy of it is covered in anger.

He stays on Polis Massa for another standard month, re-learning how to walk, how to speak. Occupational therapy, the med droids told him. He was pulled, stitched, and tugged back into something that vaguely resembled a human being, and it would take time to remember what it meant to choose his clothes, to eat food, to feel air against skin.

Life was much simpler behind the ruby-tint of his helmet's ocular ports. Now, with his own eyes and (mostly) his own voice unassisted by the dramatic timbre of a vocoder, his words held far less weight even with the prisoner-stormtroopers detached to protect him. Less so for Ahsoka, who was eyeing him with an intent he was miraculously unable to name. Her mental shielding was as guarded, if not slightly more, than Palpatine's had been.

_Palpatine._

What had he done? It was a death the emperor deserved, but he remained torn by love for him, for the war machine they had created together, for the plans they had made and had not yet come to pass - Vader had been moved by Luke's impending death, and had made a choice he was not entirely convinced he should have made; that he had the right to make.

"I don't think the galaxy is missing anything with him gone."

The Sith bristles. "You do not understand the power of the dark side, nor are you aware of the relationship between an apprentice and his master."

He regrets the words as they tumbled out of his mouth.

"You would have forgotten that, yes" Ahsoka smoothly replies. Darth Vader falls silent. Of course she knew, at least from the vantage of a padawan; an opportunity she was never fully able to assume because of Palpatine. And if he's honest, because of his own selfish actions.

He is sitting up in a bed in his recovery room, troopers positioned on either side of the door which was cordoned off by a security field only they and Ahsoka could operate. Oddly, he does not feel like a prisoner. That he doesn't can only mean that, for now, the Alliance wants him alive. They would not have invested in his recovery (somewhere in the millions of credits, though mostly plundered from his former Imperial wealth) if they were simply going to kill him.

"Why did you save Luke if you still consider yourself Sith?"

"I never said that" Vader replies, the new vocal folds, for the first time in twenty years, provide emotion and intention to color his words. They reverberate uncomfortably in his chest; another reminder of what it is to be alive. "Luke is my son. It is no more than he deserved."

Ahsoka blanches. "I'm not sure what to say to that."

"I knew that I wouldn't be able to dethrone the Emperor myself, so I sought Luke out to turn him, kill Palpatine, and claim him as my apprentice."

When he says it aloud, it sounds psychotic. Ahsoka reacts accordingly.

"Is that what you're still planning to do? Turn Master Luke?"

"No" he says, meekly, and misses the way his voice used to sound cold and unforgiving. He is not used to weakness, and although his current position demands humility, he is both willing to surrender to that role and virulently opposed to what that means.

"Then why?" Ahsoka will not back down; he knows his former padawan.

"He is my son" Vader hears himself say, as if separated from his own body "and despite what you may believe, I love him."

"Love" the Togruta spits "is not a sensation in your repertoire. Do you even know what that means? Padmé -"

"Did not deserve to be a pawn in my game with the Order, nor a surface on which to project my admitted insecurity. I loved her too, and in my Fall I paid the ultimate price."

Her shields drop, with that. For just a moment; long enough for Vader to search her feelings for a taste of what lay beyond her carefully-guarded state. What he finds is surprising.

She does not hate him. Not even a little bit; not at all. Perhaps worse than hatred is pity, and that is the bulk of what he senses. He retreats as quickly as he came.

Not soon enough.

"How _could you even_ think that searching my mind is at all acceptable at this juncture!" she nearly wails. "You haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the complexities, the ways I've hated and loved and hated you again for twenty years. What makes you think" Ahsoka jabs a gloved finger at him to accentuate his ownership of her anger "that you have even earned the right to _look_ at me, let alone know my thoughts?"

 _"Then why are you_ here?" he roars back, the subsequent crackling of his new internal prosthetics rumbling with each syllable. "Why come here at all even to command the detail assigned to protect me? Why not just stay in the Unknown Regions and dwell in the satisfaction of knowing that I was defeated?"

__

Only the sounds of monitors connected to his vital organs beep ominously in reply.

Ahsoka Tano, not one to back down from an argument, buries her face in her hands. From within them, she says

"For the same reason you cannot remain in the Dark."

Hours pass. Darth Vader fades in and out of consciousness; that interaction takes more than his body is capable of safely providing, and med droids shuttle in and out to administer sedatives, blood pressure medications, intravenous concoctions that somehow restore him enough to open his eyes, many hours later, to Ahsoka still sitting in the same place.

"You need to gather your strength, Lord Vader. We leave for Yavin IV in three days; a direct order from Mon Mothma and Alliance high command. I tried to tell them that - "

Vader holds up his hand to stop her. "They will be relentless now that I have lived. Let them have whatever iteration of me exists in three days' time. I know what my fate holds in store, regardless."

Ahsoka simply nods, rises, and lowers the security field to pass through the door. Vader - or Anakin, which he did not forget Ahsoka had used in their previous conversation and about which he had no small amount of indiscernible feelings - was left to ruminate on whatever may come next.

Most assuredly, it was not good.

The surrender of death would be the most merciful outcome for which he could hope, he thinks, and slides into another dreamless, medicated sleep.

* * *

****

_**96 Standard hours later, on Yavin IV** _

Those without the clearance to know better are attending to their daily duties as though the most dangerous man in the known galaxy was not on-world and very much in their midst.

Leia finds the thought repugnant; they all should have been notified. Warned, even, that this may yet be a ploy to wipe out the Alliance in one smooth stroke.

When she sees Darth Vader for the first time since their entanglement on Bespin, however, all notions that this could have been an ambush meet an abrupt end.

He is no longer the onyx commander who tortured and raped her mind on the first Death Star; he looks nothing like Darth Vader.

He looks human.

Leia vomits on the parade deck as Darth Vader is flanked by med droids and Alliance troops who swiftly divest the stormtroopers of their blasters, their chore of protecting Vader, and whisk them away to be interrogated and held prisoner.

The Empire has, as far as she is concerned, truly fallen with the sight of this tableau.

And she can't shake the feeling that seeing Vader's decided lack of obsidian armor makes him increasingly real, as a man and not the machine who committed a list of crimes to atrocious his new body would mean nothing if it was shot into the void of space to wither and implode. This is what he deserves. She knows this, and yet his eyes are shining an odd blue and amber, like a star exploding or a tear in a hyperspace lane.

How could he look this peaceful?

Luke rubs circles into Leia's back, eyes straight ahead and fixed on the prisoner. The worst part of this is that Darth Vader is walking toward them, and no one else knows because they have grown accustomed to the trademark helmet, the horrific height, the elegant and intimidating way he moved. There is none of that on display, now.

Just an old man. That's all.

"Lord Vader" she steps forward, the pool of vomit regarded by the subject of her greeting but ultimately dismissed with a look that illustrated humility and not at all the bemusement she would have expected "As you can imagine, we do not wish to stand on ceremony. High command will see you immediately."

"Very well" he rumbles "lead the way."

Several corridors pass by when they enter the main Massassi structure they utilize as headquarters. No one bats an eye; no one thinks to question a somber retinue, having seen it so many times before with the procession of moffs they had found most recently. To them, he is likely just another graysuit Imperial officer being interrogated and killed. None of those men have ever re-emerged; this is a funeral procession.

Mon Mothma awaits, alone, in the command center. They each sit behind the circular holoprojector and communications terminal; this was to be a group interrogation, essentially, to avoid leaving the Skywalker heirs alone with their father. A measure of protection, Mon Mothma had called it.

Leia wasn't convinced.

"Lord Vader. I presume your procedures were successful."

"They were."

"You would be correct to wonder why we are keeping you alive. After all, your current list of war crimes far exceeds that of any other Imperial officer we have thus tried and put to death."

"I am not under any illusions that I will not be met with the same fate. It is due entirely to my - to Master Luke's - efforts to save my life that I am here at all. I would have much preferred meeting my demise aboard the Death Star." Leia wishes that she had not heard the catch in Vader's voice when he stalled, choosing to call Luke by his Jedi honorific rather than _my son_. She chances a glance at her brother, only to be met with the same sullen, angst-ridden visage she had first glimpsed on the first Death Star during his and Han's heroic rescue mission.

"Practical, considering your guilt and allegiance to the Empire."

"I am a Sith commander of a fleet of the Galactic Empire. Do not conflate the two institutions; they are nothing alike."

A heavy, burdensome silence fills the space between those assembled.

"The Sith are just as culpable for terror across the galaxy as the Galactic Empire - would you not agree?"

"I would submit that they are both organizations which have caused unrest in equal albeit different ways."

"And you would be willing to expand on these differences in a way that would secure victory in subsequent dealings with what remains of the Empire?"

"I would."

Mon Mothma stands, leans forward on the terminal separating them. Even now, in the negotiation of a lifetime, there are worlds separating them - indeed, much more than the command center which had been central in conquering the Empire. Now, its most vital casualty sits before them; whole in body, destitute in soul.

"For a price" Vader adds, the crunching baritone cutting through the stillness. Han takes a deep breath; Luke's knuckles are white from grasping the edge of the terminal.

"And that would be?" Mothma probes, cautiously.

Darth Vader looks up. That same amber-blue gaze rests on the leader of the Rebellion - the band of hope-bringers who fought to the death, who did not submit to the tyranny of the Empire. The countless men and women who died to vouchsafe guardianship of the galaxy to better men, all of them in Mon Mothma's eyes, stared back into the opalescent hue of the Sith's.

"Luke. For Luke, and a small group of Force-Sensitive beings to whom I can teach how to combat the Dark; to teach them the true ways of a new Jedi Order. To make right, until my dying breath, what I destroyed. For this, I will give you whatever you ask."

The room erupts. Leia can't discern actual words; her own mind disengages from her body to protect what little sanity she has left.

It is only later that Han will tell her, long after the negotiations are finalized and the first strands of the Empire's secrets are pulled willingly from Darth Vader:

Mon Mothma agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As Vader is now living and participatory, much of his own POV will be inserted into this story. We'll swing back around to Luke eventually (because he's the hottest of messes), but for right now, you get some Vader, dear reader!


	6. there is not a samaritan nor passerby (the larks have perched themselves too high)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darth Vader's rehabilitation occurs sandwiched in between negotiations and interrogation. Leia puts her skills in espionage to the test.

He's a murderer. There's no other fitting descriptor for what he's done, and yet -

And yet he has been given a sentence that does not at all coincide with all of his sins.

They are numerous; more so than Mon Mothma, than the Rebel Alliance as a whole, can possibly know.

Vader knows that he's shaky on his feet - he takes a step forward, assisted by the horizontal durasteel bars on either side of him. A hesitant step forward is met with searing pain from his hip; these new joints will take time to settle in this new body. It will not be easy.

He takes another step, surer this time. The same pain erupts and courses through him. Perhaps this debasement is punishment enough.

Vader's concentration wanes as the Force lights up a beacon near him; he can sense Luke; like a placid lake, a breeze gently lapping at the very top of the water, and Leia's tumultuous roiling angst. He chuckles; they are both so like their parents. So many indications of both he and Padmé flood his senses.

He falls, ungraceful, gripping the durasteel bars set for just such an occasion.

Of course, Luke and Leia file in just as he loses his composure.

Wordlessly, Luke steps forward to help Vader to his feet; the Sith waves him away.

"I must learn to move again without the aid of others. Still, I thank you for your desire to attend me." His voice doesn't have the same bass timbre as it had with the vocoder, and one could not call his baritone 'silken' as Palpatine's had once been, but it was pleasing to his ear and sounded authoritative enough. The laryngeal implant was astounding.

"Mon Mothma would like some clarification on a couple of things you discussed yesterday. We've found an enclave of moffs in the Unknown Regions; Ahsoka Tano has already been dispatched to intercept them with an Alliance fleet, but -"

"You would like specifics."

"Yes" Leia sighs. "We would." His mind-reading is annoying, but their Force-bond is immutable due to shared genetics, among other reasons. Allowing him free reign in her head hasn't happened - Luke has made sure of that - but she cannot stop him from feeling specific, guarded emotions and thoughts.

Vader straightens to his full height - again, a far cry from the seven feet he had been in his armor but still a noteworthy 6'4" without the suit - and stares down at his daughter. "If you would accompany me, I would be most grateful."

Her confusion is charming, but this is how he must behave if he is to win the fate he suggested to Mon Mothma three days prior. With Leia and Luke flanking him, they slowly make their way to the command center.

"Do you know what she will ask?"

Luke swallows hard. "If there were any contingencies for Emperor Palpatine's death, and if there were similar contingencies for your capture. The moffs seem disorganized, but intelligence indicates that the Unknown Regions could have been designated as a rendezvous point."

Vader's breath catches. He had admittedly forgotten about the change of command in the event that Palpatine perished - during his reign, it was such an unlikely possibility that giving Vader full control of both the Imperial Navy and the Empire as a whole seemed a foregone conclusion; to say nothing of the ramifications of the Rule of Two should such a thing occur.

And since Palpatine died by his hand -

"The contingency" Darth Vader begins, sweeping into the command center and addressing Mon Mothma as he focused on propelling his unwilling appendages "is not so much a backup plan as it was a reflection of Sith law."

"How so?" Her clipped Core accent was biting. Vader forgets that not everyone is aware of these nuances, these ancient sensibilities. It was up to him to educate them as much as it was to inform them.

"The Rule of Two" he begins, sitting down carefully "was instituted by the late Darth Bane, who lived and died over one-thousand years before the Clone Wars. It was this Sith Lord who decreed that there would only ever be two Sith in the galaxy: one to instruct in and wield the power, and the other to crave and learn it. At such a time as the apprentice killed the master, that individual would be the reigning Sith Lord and would take another apprentice to continue the cyclical life of Sith."

Mon Mothma nods. "This does not answer how the Empire was to function in the event of yours and Palpatine's capture and death, respectively."

"Our entire foundation for leadership was founded on the Rule of Two; the moffs you are hunting in the Unknown Regions will squabble amongst themselves until they kill one another. My Master - the Emperor - knew that this would come to pass. There were no contingencies; I stand to inherit the sum total of his responsibility, his wealth, and his power."

The temperature in the room seemed to drop.

"If I am hearing you correctly, you're saying that you are the sole heir to Palpatine's Empire?"

" _Our_ Empire, yes."

Leia recoils. "You still believe that this machine you created will live beyond your capture and Palpatine's death?"

"I did not say that."

"Then what are you saying?" Mon Mothma asks. "Help us understand."

Darth Vader fixes his gaze on Luke, who senses this and looks up to return the intensity of his stare. "I am saying that the Empire is dead. Let the moffs kill each other for whatever scraps they can muster; there will be nothing for them. All of the wealth my master acquired belongs to me - and which I am prepared to relinquish in the name of the Alliance."

"Ahsoka is halfway across the galaxy, leading a rather large fleet. Will this provide enough firepower to annihilate what remains?"

"No" Vader says, losing his patience. "You will need to dispatch still more Rebels to Coruscant, and to Kuat. To fire the ships and kill the officials who could still manipulate the Senate into giving them emergency power. If memory serves, this happened on the day the Empire was created; so you will need to be far more astute this time."

Leia can barely breathe, that makes her so angry.

"I cannot listen to another syllable" she all but shouts, standing up. "Mon Mothma, I have heard enough. Lord Vader still considers himself Sith, which means that he will be in want of an apprentice. What insurance do we have that he will not use Luke to this end?"

Darth Vader is not completely circumspect, even if his current state is one of glorified imprisonment. "Daughter" he intones, and at this a redness creeps from her neck and floods her face in scarlet anger "you must know that Luke recognized good in me long before our confrontation above Endor. It is because of the Emperor's near-murder of Luke himself that I made a choice to overthrow Palpatine. Partnered with the Alliance, we can bring peace to the galaxy; and perhaps I can restore balance to the Force at last."

" _Balance_."

Leia's signature in the Force has gone from that of a dying star to full super-nova in a matter of ten minutes since the conversation began.

Most definitely, she is Padmé's daughter. A Skywalker to the bone.

"I am the Chosen One; do not think I have forgotten." Luke nods solemnly from across the dais. Mon Mothma relaxes her shoulders for the first time since the meeting began.

"Then let us use that to first secure peace from whatever residual terror the Empire can create, such as it is."

"Very well" Vader nods. "Fire the shipyard at Kuat, and go to Coruscant to arrest whatever aids and pages you can find who worked within the Empire. Ahsoka will take care of the moffs and their fleets, whatever remains of them, in the Unknown Regions."

Mon crosses her arms over her chest. "And you will continue to cooperate with us?"

"My position is complicated. I cannot refuse to offer what I know."

"Very well. Master Skywalker, please ensure that Lord Vader is returned to his wardens in the med bay. I am certain we interrupted his physical therapy for this gathering. Report to me after."

Vader rises, with much more difficulty than he had anticipated, and followed Luke. Leia just stared at them, remaining in the command center; no doubt to address her own concerns with Mon Mothma.

"Why did you do that?" Luke jabs. "You know she can't stand the sight of you, let alone hearing you call her your daughter."

"I needed to get her attention; to make her listen."

"You can't make anyone do anything."

The med bay is clear of all organics but he and Luke. There are only droids; one of whom offers Vader a painkiller, which he accepts.

"I can _encourage_ your sister to accept her parentage, but you are correct; I cannot force her to find peace with it."

"She never will. You know this, and so do I. She wasn't on the Death Star with us; she will never understand."

Vader places either hand on each durasteel bar and resumes his attempts at walking once more. "I think you know that I will not refute my claim as the reigning Sith Lord in the galaxy. And I think you know that it is because I am Sith that the best chance for the Alliance's survival rests with me."

It's counterintuitive; he knows this. Vader also knows that Luke is far more versed than his sister when it comes to the rich history of the Jedi and of the Sith. He also knows his son, and how he feels both sides course through him, tangling around themselves. Oh, how he longed to show his son what the Dark Side could accomplish; but it was not to be. The galaxy deserved permission to rise from its unending tumult, and Vader would ensure that happened.

But he knows that the temptation would persist.

So did Luke.

"Father" he begins, cautious, standing in front of Vader in the event that he became unstable again. Darth Vader allows this, a sensation of warmth settling in his chest at the sight.

"Is it possible to embody both the Light and the Dark?"

Vader thinks on this; it does not take long to remember Qui Gon Jinn.

"One can embody the Light and understand the dark."

It doesn't exactly answer his question, but it is as close as Vader can come to explaining the only Gray Jedi he had ever known. And even then, his memories of the late Master Jinn were questionable; Obi-Wan would have had him believe that Jinn's philosophy regarding the Force were so outlandish that they ought to be completely cast out and unacknowledged in standard Jedi teaching.

The truth is, if the galaxy is to rise to its feet once more, it must be protected by those who understand both sides of the spectrum; and the immense moral neutrality that exists in between.

Darth Vader realized that he had made it to the opposite end of the assisted walking course; he turned around, and Luke with him, to walk back down to the other end.

"I once knew a Jedi Master who believed that the Living Force is far less concerned with dark or light, and more invested in maintaining balance. What do you think?"

Luke doesn't hesitate. "I think Ben was wrong about you because he refused to believe that."

Darth Vader nods. "And do you think that the Alliance and Kenobi share a similar belief?"

"Yes" Luke says again, quieter. "I think that Leia knows this, but is too given to anger herself to see past what you've done."

_What I've done._

_What I have done is kill. Torture. Murder. What I have done would see my soul damned to every hell from every afterlife in every culture in the known galaxy a million times over, and it wouldn't be enough._

_What I have done only amounts to tipping the scales in favor of the Light. To balance it, I must give all I am, all I have._

"I heard you."

Vader is halfway finished with a second full-distance walk to the opposite end. A flash of Leia's intense, dark eyes stares back at him from the now-shifting shadows of midday. Did she hear what he had said? The Force does not show a blazing flare of anger as it had earlier; if she heard him, did she understand?

But it is Luke who says this, and Vader pulls his facial muscles into what likely looks like a grimace but that he intends to be a half-smile, at worst.

"It is our bond. Kenobi and I shared a similar mind-entwining. But I am glad that you can hear me."

This places them in a dangerous position, Vader realizes as Luke takes his silent leave. The Force is devoid of other sentients in his immediate vicinity, and he dons a black cape (old habits die hard, indeed) as he travels the short walk to his living quarters, again flanked by black-clad Alliance guards. If Luke can hear his father's thoughts in the same way Obi-Wan had been able to do, he could face repercussions from Mon Mothma if he discovered that he was withholding information.

Not that Vader was planning on holding anything back, but - there were a few key pieces of information he did not feel inclined to divulge just yet.

Like the Emperor's clone bodies, for example.

He shuts out the thought, raising his mental shields. Walking into his guest quarters, guarded and enforced for the safety of all denizens of the Yavin IV Alliance base, he prepared to sleep. A med droid, ever-present in his bedchamber, offered a sedative. He willingly accepted it.

Sleep was, that evening and for the first time since he arrival on Yavin IV, difficult to come by.

If Luke knew half of what his father did, he would cast out his lightsaber and his connection to the Force, and fall at his father's feet.

Gods knew that Darth Vader would do the same, if given the chance.

A thought shoots across Vader's mind in the haze just before sleep takes him: the Jedi must end.

And the Sith with them.

* * *

****

Of course she'd followed them. Not because Mon Mothma told her to, and certainly not at the behest of a frustrated Han (he had taken to sleeping on the _Falcon_ more often than not these last few nights), but because she was jealous of her brother. Jealous of knowledge he seemed to have, and that might make Darth Vader's presence easier to bear.

Jealous of what they knew, father and son.

And jealousy, as Ben had once told her, is the root of the Darkness.

Leia Organa makes a second promise: she will not be weak, and she will not hate. It will be hard; it will hurt. But she cannot hate a man who now wishes to help where before he was only capable of hurting.

Leia Organa will try.


	7. dawn breaks and the nest is empty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two Standard months later, endless hours of discussion have lead the Alliance to learn more from Lord Darth Vader than they could have hoped. The Sith has regained full command of his new body, and is eager to end his negotiations with Mon Mothma.
> 
> The perfect location for the new Jedi Temple is chosen. 
> 
> Ahsoka returns with news of a certain Imperial officer - a Chiss who helped her blow up Kuat Drive Yards, and realizes that perhaps her former master is capable of goodness.
> 
> As the Empire unravels, life somehow becomes increasingly complicated.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally, this was going to be an insanely long chapter - but I'm splitting it up. First, headcanon for the connection between this AU and the sequel trilogy! More Vader/Ahsoka. Our erstwhile Sith is beginning to feel more like himself, and Tano is torn.

Mon Mothma is a brilliant, cunning woman. Many people don't know that she orchestrated hundreds of hits to ensure the Rebellion's early victories; she sent men and women knowingly to their deaths for what may have amounted to nothing at all. She would be regretful of this but for the safety these deaths eventually secured; and may the gods forgive her, she believes that it is because of that work that Darth Vader stands before her, a glorified hostage. The Empire has fallen quite literally at her feet, and suddenly everything she's ever done - all of that blood, all of those lives - were not wasted.

She hopes that no one will find themselves in a similar position ever again; but she knows that is a highly unlikely prospect. Instead, she hopes that whosoever finds themselves in this dubious position will do what she has done: fought. Without regard for consequence, without regard for humanity. It is what one must do to survive.

Vader knows this; he can feel it in the way she speaks to him now, as a victorious general more than the groveling sycophant most of Alliance high command are in reality. It is only because the Sith respects her that he gives her the information she needs; he knows that she will use it effectively.

"About Bespin" she says, folding her hands in her lap. "Why General Solo? He meant nothing in the grand scheme of what you had planned and you have stated on several occasions your distaste for working with bounty hunters."

Vader crosses his legs - a newer development in his repertoire of body language, a constant errand of discovery - and shrugs noncommittally. "Boba Fett lost his father rather violently during the Clone Wars at the hands of the Jedi. I felt - bonded to him because of this. It was in the interest of this bond that I gave him Han Solo."

"And Han Solo was a traitor to the Empire."

"That was secondary."

"Interesting."

Vader hates that word. Mothma only uses it when she thinks that something Vader has said is nonsensical, and it doesn't happen often; but he had admitted to a few occasional missteps whose purposes had eluded her even after he offered what he believed to be a viable explanation.

"Was it your goal then to abduct Luke, or to assert the Empire's control over Bespin? Their Tibanna gas mines were well-operated, but the amount of natural resource they could have provided was far below anything in which the Empire would have been interested."

Vader knew this question was coming. His assault on Hoth had a purpose; the destruction of Alderaan had been a calculated and coordinated effort between both himself and the late Grand Moff Tarkin, but Bespin was the first time his judgment had been clouded in favor of absconding with his son.

Vader smirks. "You are correct in asserting that my reasons for bringing an Imperial presence to Bespin were ambiguous. By this time, I was wholly invested in turning Luke so that we could overthrow the Emperor together."

"Your relationship with Palpatine had soured in the years following the creation of the Empire?"

_Relationship._

"The Emperor had become obsessed with harnessing knowledge that his master had kept from him. He become increasingly uninterested in the natural order of the Sith; that I would kill him eventually was not foremost on his mind, which allowed me the latitude to come and go at will and without his express permission."

Mothma leans forward. "Do you think" she all but whispers "that you went to Bespin to confront Luke because of who he was, and not what he represented to your dyad with the Emperor?"

This is a question that had plagued Vader for months following his foray to the city in the clouds. Indeed, his actions had been propelled by a desire to find and speak with Luke; at the time, the only way he could illustrate his feelings for his son were to attempt to bring him to the dark side.

"I have always loved my children."

Mon offers a wan smile. "Does love exist in the Dark?"

Vader changes the subject.

"You asked me two weeks ago where I would go, should your attempts to locate additional members of Imperial high command prove productive. I now have an answer."

Mon nods.

"Ahch-To, I think, will suit the purpose." There is a glass of wine that he has not touched; it is early evening, which is customary for these discussions since he has given more information and was thus awarded certain privileges. Some lower-level Alliance operatives even knew he was on-base. So far, he had been able to come and go without escorts; he proved quickly that he would not run.

The wine glass, for him, is only half-full. Mothma's is nearly empty. She tops off her glass - Alderaanian crystal, Vader could recognize it anywhere - and takes a small sip.

"I am unfamiliar."

"It is the birthplace of the Jedi Order; and it is where the New Jedi Order must begin."

"Why?"

Darth Vader is rarely surprised at Mothma's boldness.

"For symbolic reasons, primarily. To return to the place of one's birth is a powerful act of homage."

"Following that logic, one might think you would go to Tatooine."

It wasn't entirely a fair statement, but Vader lets it slide. He finds that the woman has occasionally made jabs at him if for no other reason than to show that she had read the entirety of his declassified file. A shocking feat, considering Anakin Skywalker's information had been destroyed.

She was resourceful; he willingly gave her that much.

"Tatooine lacks the temperate climate necessary for adequate training."

"And Korriban?"

"That is ancient history."

"Sith seem to be born in the sand."

Vader sighs. Sometimes those jabs become personal.

His anger bubbles under the surface of the facade he wishes her to see - a whole, complete man in body but perhaps a fraction of the being he was in spirit.

"Korriban and Tatooine would be suitable for the rigors of Sith training, but not for the type of restorative work which Luke and I must do."

This seems to satisfy the commandant's curiosity, and she takes another, healthier sip of wine. Vader follows suit; he is still unused to alcohol. He'd rarely indulged as a Jedi, and with most of his adult life spent in the prison of his life support suit, the intoxicating effects were nearly immediate. This evening was no different.

The sun created dancing shadows on the walls of the command center. It was a sight Vader had learned to appreciate, for it typically would portend an evening spent wandering the grounds before he would retire to his chambers. At times, Luke would join him on these walks. He found himself hoping that this evening would yield Luke's company.

Leia had never joined them.

"You will need a ship."

"I will. A craft large enough to safely transport myself, Luke, Ahsoka Tano, and the individuals who volunteer as padawans."

"This can be arranged. Your services to the Alliance have been and will continue to be commensurate to earning this, I'm sure."

With that, their conversation is over. Mothma's standards for how productive their conversations are have only become higher as time has gone on, and Vader makes an effort to meet and exceed these standards. Thus far, he does not sense that he has disappointed the Alliance commandant, although tonight he feels that she is left wanting.

"Forgive me; I sense that you wish to ask more, but are reluctant to do so."

With a casualness that Vader wouldn't have though her capable of, Mothma grasps the elegant wine glass by its stem and unceremoniously drains it. "Of course I do. I always do. There are so many things I still don't understand, and I wish to know -" she stops, clearly having shown the emotion behind her questioning.

"Yes?" He tries to open her mind to him, but for one who is not Sensitive, her shielding is impressive. He wonders if she hadn't employed an outside technological force to protect her from Vader's admittedly unfortunate proclivity toward searching the feelings of others.

"It is immaterial. You are still, essentially, a prisoner; but what I have always wanted to know is why? Why serve the Emperor? Why turn your back on your wife and children?"

"It was my destiny, then. The same destiny which has lead me here. I am not omniscient; I am prepared to toil over the answer to those questions for the remainder of my life."

Satisfied, Mon Mothma nods. As their eventide parley concludes, a second presence is felt long before barreling through the doors.

"Tano" Mon says, suddenly all business. "You've returned."

A stack of flimsis are tossed onto the command control center without preamble. Ahsoka looks - livid.

"I have, and with news."

Vader cannot read her in the slightest.

Mon Mothma raises her eyebrows in anticipation.

Ahsoka takes a steadying breath. "Anakin, do you remember someone named Thrawn?"

_Fuck_

.

He makes himself the picture of calm. "I vaguely recall the name."

Tano gasps, incredulous. "Mon, you can go. I need to talk to this sorry sack of -"

"You will not address me with the informal speech of a soldier, Padawan Tano. I am a Sith Lord, and you will regard me as such."

A beat of silence. Tano sits. Mon Mothma stands, agape.

"You" Ahsoka begins, shaking with rage "spoke to a brilliant strategist named Thrawn. Blue-skinned, red-eyed; from the planet Csilla in the Unknown Regions. Said he helped you find Padmé, once."

Darth Vader stands, leaning forward on two strong arms. He has felt more like his former self in this last handful of days than ever before; so much had his physical state improved that he could now dress himself, and in clothes he took pride in wearing. Although they weren't particularly different than what he used to wear - a snythleather tabard, a thick black belt from which hung his lightsaber, a black robe, gray trousers tucked into high black boots and a black tunic - he did not look like a prisoner. He looked like an equal, and when he stood up, it took Ahsoka's breath away.

"Mitth'raw'nuruodo." That is the name with which he used to introduce himself - more commonly known as Grand Admiral Thrawn. You worked together during the Clone Wars, and later commissioned him as an officer. Palpatine's _pet_ " Ahsoka added, with no small amount of righteous indignation in her voice. "How'd that feel?"

"My feelings regarding Grand Admiral Thrawn are immaterial. He was a strategist with no equal, and turned the act of knowing one's enemy into an art. His theories and stratagem were taught in the Imperial Academy long after he left; probably at the time of the Death Star's destruction, even. What did he say?"

Ahsoka squares her shoulders. She looks exhausted; no doubt she'd had her fair share of dogfights and close calls in the time she'd been gone. Vader is loathe not to recognize that this is just another in a long line of sacrifices Ahsoka has made for the cause; he silently promises to make it up to her on Ahch-To.

"He helped me blow up Kuat Drive Yards, and the remainder of his own fleet."

Well, Vader hadn't expected _that_.

"He was quite proud of his meteoric rise through the Imperial ranks. I find it difficult to believe that he would willingly destroy his own fleet."

"Believe it. Once I told him what had happened, he was very specific in what he wanted me to tell you."

"Which was?"

"He said that you found the ultimate weakness of your enemy long before anyone else, and used it at the right moment. He found your reasons for killing the Emperor to be honorable; which is why he helped us destroy the remaining Imperial ships. He also said that there are more who went even further into Wild Space to wait for the dust to settle, but that ultimately, his part in the destruction of the nearby fleets would signal the end of the Empire. Definitively."

Vader straightened to his full height. "And do you believe this? Is it over?"

"Hardly, Master."

Her use of an old honorific - and one which he bitterly realizes he never earned - is not lost on him.

"Well done, Ahsoka. I will retire for the evening, but I would like a full report first thing tomorrow." Mon smiles emptily at Ahsoka. The Togruta offers a vacuous smile of her own. It is not for lack of enthusiasm that they do this, Vader realizes; it is because they have no enthusiasm left. Exhaustion has set in; ironically, just as Vader is finding his feet again.

When Ahsoka and Vader are the only two left in the command center, the pall that had settled over them initially is gone.

"What did you learn?"

"I told you, he -"

"No" Vader says, pouring Tano a glass of wine and topping of his own. "What did _you_ learn?"

She sits only after Vader does. He waits for her answer.

"Your brass respected you. He knew you from before - before you became Darth Vader."

"And?"

"He lauded your courage. Even after you fell to the dark side, he found something redeeming about your character."

"There" Vader stabs a black-gloved finger at her. "You admit it. There are things about the dark that can be redeeming. One who falls to the dark side can retain pieces of who they were before, which guide them to make choices according to the morality they still possess."

"That means nothing" Ahsoka growls. "You have yet to take full responsibility for the lives you took, the planets you destroyed. Your _daughter's_ homeworld!"

"Her homeworld is NABOO" Darth Vader bellows. "Like her mother, whom I all but killed with my own hands. I am fully aware that what I did - who I am - was and is wrong."

"As usual, you're making this about you; it isn't. And while you're preparing to go off and begin a new Jedi Order, you need to focus on what you did to Leia. What you did to _me_."

His heart thuds duly in his chest.

"Leia will not speak with me."

"Give her time."

The way Ahsoka says it, resigned and non-confrontational, makes Vader question Ahsoka's anger. They drink their wine in silence.

"You know what you did" she finally says, in the near-dark. The sun is almost down; if Luke was to walk with him, he would not have waited.

"I do. To you, to Leia, to Luke. I am under no delusions of innocence."

"That's all I ask."

Ahsoka drains her glass and rises. "Goodnight, Lord Vader."

He does not call her 'master', and it cuts like a knife.

"Goodnight, Ahsoka."


	8. the larks have flown, surrendered their home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darth Vader teaches Luke a valuable lesson, and learns something in the process. Father and son discuss the past, and a way forward is unclear.

Twilight. Vader didn't think he would ever see such a sight again; at least, not with his own eyes. The sunsets on Yavin are not particularly spectacular, but they are real - not controlled by the WeatherNet as they had been on Coruscant, and not reminiscent of bittersweet sunsets on Tatooine. One was manufactured; the other an illusion of freedom as a slave in rags, looking to a horizon he could always see but never reach.

But this is real, and Luke tromps alongside him to keep up with Vader's longer stride. This amuses the dark lord, knowing that the boy is trying so hard to maintain an air of elegance befitting a Jedi Knight and wanting to please his father.

There would be time enough for such things on Ahch-To perhaps, but now is not a time for vainglorious try-hards. The Alliance needs strong men and women, not milquetoast people-pleasers. In anyone else, these traits would annoy Vader.

In Luke, he can only smile.

When night falls on Yavin, if one were to look up, flocks of Whisper birds can be seen bedding down under cover of their long, golden wings. In the waning light, they look like angels; silently holding vigil for father and son as they ramble through the overgrowth. Not yet in the wild, as they are still near the base, the song of night can still be heard from other creatures chanting their sleepy tunes.

An opalescent sky above completes a picture of peace, even if it isn't a wholly accurate picture. Vader revels in the silence as they walk, occasionally stopping to rest and stretch. Nights are cold on Yavin, especially as they are in the midst of the planet's autumnal cycle. Puffs of air escape Vader's lips when he breathes; it has been so long since he has been capable of such a thing that it strikes him as a sacred, ancient art.

These implants and new cybernetics are unforgiving; he was warned of this, but healing is a warrior's business. During one such pause, Luke chances a conversation.

"Ahsoka told me about Admiral Thrawn. He came here of his own volition; Mon Mothma may have a use for him yet."

Darth Vader's boots crunch the foliage below. Climbing ferns tangle themselves, bioluminescent and comely though they are, in the laces of his footwear. Another seemingly insignificant experience that only he finds holy, wholesome - but that no one else would understand. Pain continues to radiate in waves from his legs, but walking has become easier in recent days. Mon Mothma has asked less of him since Ahsoka's return, preferring instead to work with Alliance operatives to capture and bring the Chiss into their fold. Thrawn will come, eventually, and how that happens is none of Vader's business.

"There would be many uses for _Grand_ Admiral Thrawn. He was an invaluable asset; there are many skills at his disposal that, if leveraged correctly, could mean victory for the Alliance."

"I didn't mean to offend you. I have always been confused by Imperial rank structure."

Vader, heavily, replies "'Grand Admiral' is a rank that was specifically created for Thrawn."

"By the Emperor?"

"Of course. This was during a time when I was his hammer and nothing more; he needed a tactician, a strategist. What I offered was brutality, and the Emperor needed cunning."

They come to a clearing, a small circle of untouched earth surrounded by the thick, ancient trees that are so pervasive on Yavin. The Force ebbs easily, here; it's no wonder, considering that the Massassi had been interbred with the Sith thousands of years ago and those alliances were still tangible in the air around them. The Sith knows that Luke can feel this too, although as has been typical, Luke is distracted.

"Mothma has decided that you will not appear before the Senate. I disagreed with her, and Leia, curiously, did not. Why?"

There have been so many questions asked of him since his arrival. As best as he has been able, he has illuminated them to as much information as he knows; he has quantified all of the crimes he committed in the name of the Empire, each mission he was sent on to cause destruction and death in the Emperor's name. He still thinks that Obi-Wan betrayed him, though he regrets their duel on the Death Star and, sometimes, its outcome.

A life demands a life, and that is not simply a Sith way; it is the way of the galaxy.

"Leia has also accepted the Senate seat" Luke continues, carding a hand through his hair "so I'm inclined to think she doesn't want the truth of her sire to leak."

At this, Vader laughs. It's such a formal way to address a simple point. "It is biology, Luke. Nothing more. Someday, when the Skywalker legacy ends, it will not matter."

"But it does now, and history will remember -"

The Sith lord holds up a gloved hand. "They will remember that in the end, there was a Sith who chose his family over the allure of power; ambition."

Luke's eyes widen. "So you do still consider yourself Sith."

"I could be nothing else. It is the life I chose. This body, the armor that came before it, were part of a greater choice. It was my destiny to do so; it was my destiny to balance the Force."

"Do you think you've done that? There's still so much to do, and Mon Mothma hasn't even left for Coruscant and likely won't until Grand Admiral Thrawn arrives -"

Vader shakes his head. Above them, a light rain begins to fall. The scent is intoxicating; it is the first time he has been able to smell rain in two decades. Luke continues to spin and whir in the Force next to him; the elder Skywalker merely breathes in deeply, exhales slowly. Funny; this is how Obi-Wan would have wished for him to be twenty years ago, and it is because he needs his son to grasp those lessons now, he finds himself at long last in full concert with the Force.

His eyes are closed, but he can feel Luke's boring into him.

"Ask yourself what you know to be true."

Luke swallows hard. "You are a Sith lord."

"And?" Vader quirks an eyebrow, eyes still shut. The Force is flowing through him easily now, unencumbered by the venomous darkness of his former master.

"You are my father."

"Yes" the Sith breathes, satisfied. "Yes. What more is there?"

"Leia" Luke begins, saying her name on a stuttering breath. "She will take us to Ahch-To but - Han."

Vader's eyes opened. He had seen it too. He doesn't need to tell Luke that this is only one possible future.

Luke still has so much to learn.

"They will marry. A new generation of Jedi will rise from that union."

The rain falls harder above them now, and the lush canopy is doing almost nothing to protect their clothes from a wet, cold fate. Luke stands, shaky on his feet.

"I need to know if you regretted any of it. My mother, Ben, becoming Sith. Killing in the name of the Empire."

Darth Vader's jaw crunches. He has waited for Luke to take him to task philosophically, away from Mon Mothma's eager ears (while their rapport was markedly more productive, she was eager to incriminate him), but his answer was not what anyone would want to hear.

"No" he says simply. "Everything I ever did was predetermined by a need to balance the Force. This need was not something I could refuse."

"But the cruelty you displayed in doing so was unwarranted. It was immoral and against everything you were taught; you were angry and I understand that -"

"Everything I loved had been taken from me, Luke."

"Ben didn't betray you. He loved you, and when you became the Emperor's apprentice, you were as good as dead. I understand what he meant, now."

Vader quiets. "And that was?"

"That Darth Vader betrayed and murdered my father."

Well.

"He did not tell you about the confrontation on Coruscant; when Darth Sidious was discovered. I begged them to let him stand trial as the law stated; he deserved that much, and the Jedi nearly killed him. I stopped the attack, but Sidious - the Emperor - ended up killing the Jedi who came to arrest him. So disillusioned and lost was I that I sank down to my knees and pledged an oath to the Sith Lord, becoming his apprentice."

It is raining hard now, and they are both soaked to the bone. Still, Vader is unwilling to quit the conversation because Luke needs to know. He needs to understand that this new Order cannot function the way it did.

_They nearly killed me_

_I did what I had to do to protect those I loved_

_Palpatine was the only one, the only one, the only one to_

_Hear me. He heard me and listened to me and accepted me and Obi-Wan **rejected me**_

_Padmé - I will never forgive myself that_

_Regret. Darkness. Regret._

Luke's hair is matted to his head, and he's sniffling - Vader cannot tell if he's crying or simply has a chill - but when Luke ignites his lightsaber and lunges forward, he doesn't have time to decide which.

They crumple in on each other, uneven ground causing Vader to lose his footing and take Luke down with him. The green-bladed weapon is thankfully extinguished in the fall, but Luke's intent had been to hurt.

And it was even still, as the young Skywalker straddled his father and pummeled him with balled fists, screaming into the night. It was dark now, so long beyond the twilight they had enjoyed - something else, something twisted.

Vader holds his hands in front of his face, which ultimately do nothing to protect him, but Luke is screaming now - words Vader cannot understand through the rapid movement of both arms, bringing down a torrent of rage and hatred. It was shocking, beautiful, and abjectly sad. This is what his familial legacy had created: anger. Fear. Aggression. Perhaps once, Vader would have been proud to see his son accept these things as immutable, as ultimately helpful to his end. Now, they serve as proof that he had failed. That he did have things to regret, and that even if his choices had been made to bring balance to the Force, there could be no balance to be found in anything else.

"I hate you!" Luke screams, full-voiced and terrible. "I hate you and Leia hates you, and I wish they had killed you rather than rebuild you and I'm a fool for letting you live!"

The boy will tire quickly; he is already showing signs of the cold getting the better of him. Vader takes the opportunity to still the young man's arms, flipping him onto his back and Vader on one knee, pulling Luke up and crushing him to his chest.

"Stop this" he says, a node above a whisper. "You can hit me, maim me, hate me if you wish. You can kill me in this very place and no one would blame you, no one could. Hear me now: I cannot change what has happened. All I am able to do is - help. Now. However I can. You must believe this, Luke. You saw the good in me, and that is why you saved me."

"You're _Sith_ " he screamed. "You don't care about anything."

"That is not true." Suddenly, Vader realizes that this embrace is a protective measure. He knows that Luke could easily overtake him now, kill him, and rid the world of a tyrant. Luke's feelings are complex, and the flow between hatred and bright, blinding love.

Vader himself feels no such connection yet; only amusement that the boy could perhaps end his life, and the irony in it all.

He lets go of Luke, who is now gasping for air and panting with exertion. Vader stands, leaving Luke on his knees in the mud.

"You must learn to master your emotions, my son. This will not do if we are to begin afresh."

He turns to leave, but a heavy hand falls on his shoulder. This hurts him too, and he scowls at the pain and a sudden, biting cold that has now seeped through the layers of clothing and settled into his organic skin. It has been years since he has felt true cold; this is not a sensation he enjoys. Neither Luke's unbridled rage, nor the bone-deep weariness, nor the pain.

"Then do what is right. You can't fix this, father, but you can help. Tell me what I need to know."

In time. It will happen in time, and yet there is none to be spared.

Vader says nothing, and takes his leave. Luke remains behind, catching his breath and making a promise of his own not unlike Leia's: he will not allow himself to give in to hatred ever again.

This is the lesson.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An allusion to Ben Solo. 
> 
> Luke sees the tiniest glimpse of fate, and doesn't like it. He takes it out on his father.


	9. what once was prey is now protected

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia departs for Coruscant to assume her seat in the Senate. 
> 
> Grand Admiral Thrawn is reunited with Darth Vader. As ever, the Chiss attempts first to understand his enemy. An unlikely victor takes the upper hand in their discussion - serious consequences are garnered for both parties.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh, ALL RELEVANT TAGS ADDED. This chapter took a decidedly gory turn.

It's cold.

Although nothing like the pervasive, marrow-deep bitterness of Hoth, it makes Leia shiver all the same. Fanned in front of her are an array of garments she has amassed over the years, rarely worn in favor of the standard-issue uniforms of the Alliance. Now, as she prepares to assume her position as the Senator from Naboo, the need for opulence in dress starkly contrasts against the utilitarian garb of an Alliance officer. It makes her stomach churn; another major change stands before her, and she is somewhat unwilling to walk across that threshold and into a new and different stage of life.

Han has been lingering in doorways and sighing heavily, wiping his brow with greasy hands stained from carbon scoring as he's worked to get the _Falcon_ worthy of transporting royalty and, now, a Senator. She can feel the pressure from him in waves through her rudimentary understanding of the Force, but the tangible ways in which that stress resides in his muscles are readily apparent when she lies with him. There are still four days which separate her from _now_ and what lies ahead; if Han wants to tell her something, he had better make it quick. She isn't going to stop for him; she's already decided. Leia will not slow down to satisfy the wanderlust of a smuggler - and that's what he was, even after becoming General Solo. Always and forever a smuggler; always and forever an orphan.

It isn't that she doesn't love him; she would have gladly dismantled the Death Star by hand if she knew it would make him happy, but this was not as much about the Empire or monetary recompense as it had been about her hand. She knew this, and perhaps used it to her advantage (especially on Hoth, grotesque as such an admission may be), but Leia had long ago stopped hating herself for loving him.

And there was no doubt that he would tear down the stars for her.

So.

"The black seems a bit mournful, although my address will point out that Alderaan was destroyed at the behest of Grand Moff Tarkin."

"I wouldn't; it makes you look like an old maid." Leia scrunched her nose and punched him on the shoulder.

"Blue, then. A low neck, but not so low that cleavage can be seen. It's tasteful and elegant; stately, even."

"It isn't quite in the Naboo style, is it?"

Han could occasionally strike her speechless.

"How do you know about Naboo couture?"

"All of the holovids I watched of then-Senator Palpatine seemed to show him wearing some voluminous, colorful robe. I'd assumed that's just how it was; I don't know anything about couture."

"That's - accurate. I had a tailor from Naboo create a few pieces that await in the new apartments on Coruscant, but I purposefully instructed him to tone it down. I don't want anyone to equate me with Palpatine."

Han rises, cupping Leia's face in his hands. "I don't think anyone's gonna do that, Princess." He plants a kiss on her forehead, swiping his black vest off the back of a lounger. "I gotta go. Thrawn is here, and Mon wants me to observe the conversation he has with Vader."

Leia still doesn't understand why Thrawn and Vader are being allowed to speak, but Mothma had said that their discussion was to be moderated in the event that Lord Vader is tempted to align himself with Thrawn. If nothing else, it will be an interesting and revealing dialog, if only because of the information it will uncover. Taking this information to the Senate and working it into her general address is of the utmost importance, which is the only reason Han is attending. Leia had seen to that; Mon had simply made up an excuse.

Again, she uses Han as a means to an end. It makes her stomach curl in on itself.

"Let me know what happens" she mutters, as non-committal as possible. In truth, she can't stand the sight of Vader's unmasked face.

"I will. Still not sure why you're not going."

Leia motions to the mountain of clothing on their bed. "For obvious reasons of imperative galactic security."

Han laughs and tosses a rude hand gesture her way before turning on his heel.

She's already decided that, should he ever ask, she'll marry him. Even before he leaves their quarters and the door whooshes closed behind him.

It is the least she can do.

  
****

* * *

**  
**

_His uniform is impeccable._

Vader chides himself for the air of frustration this realization causes. A war criminal has no right to look as Thrawn does - relaxed, at ease, completely uninhibited even in the face of his surroundings and situation. He is a prisoner of the Rebel Alliance, and yet there is not an ounce of trepidation within him that Vader can sense.

Perhaps it is his presence which has caused a false sense of ease. Their working relationship had been strained in the latter days of the Empire, but that was more due to the Emperor's meddling than it was any true strife between the two men. Palpatine had longed to place a wedge between them; both to adulate Thrawn and further isolate Vader, causing the former to jettison into new territory as an Imperial officer, and the latter to draw closer to his master.

Now that Palpatine no longer stands between them, the old feelings of rivalry and jealousy have evaporated. They are former colleagues; nothing more.

Former colleagues with a galaxy between them, and in order to ensure both of their survival in this new order, they would need to somehow meet in the middle.

"You are looking well" the familiar, ethereal voice calls across the table. "I had not anticipated that the Alliance would use much-needed credits to, hm, _repair_ you. Is that the correct term?"

"I would agree with its use in this case. The verb denotes that something was once broken and simply needed to be fixed. I was, as you are aware, broken."

The word hangs between them. Thrawn knows what this means, but wisely chooses to remain silent. The Chiss knew about Padme, and eventually Obi-Wan's betrayal; there need be no rehashing of the past in order for the two men to communicate effectively, and it would serve no purpose to discuss those things now.

"In any case, I am glad to see that you are so vastly improved from your previous circumstances."

Vader cuts to the chase. "Why come here a traitor when you could have easily slipped away, back to Csilla?"

"You should know that I never once held your position as Emperor Palpatine's right hand against you. His Majesty was a man of impossible and illogical whims, as I am sure you know."

The Sith persisted. "Coming here will only guarantee your eventual death when the Alliance has exhausted its use of you. You could have gone anywhere - even abandoned your fleet and left them to die in the Unknown Regions, or even lead them into Wild Space and killed them all. Your abilities are, without a doubt, the most prodigious I have seen in the Empire - including Tarkin. Why?"

"He cared for you, you know. It is why he was never able to satisfy his end of your archaic, religious bargain. He did not want you to die, but he did want you to suffer. Fascinating."

Vader's heavy fists fall on the table between them, shaking the durasteel legs. Thrawn remained unmoved. "I am asking you what you have to gain by coming here. Where are your crew members? Was the _Chimaera_ destroyed?"

Thrawn takes a deep, even breath. "I believe that he even _loved_ you, if a Sith lord is capable of such emotional investment."

"Enough!" Vader roared. Behind Thrawn's head, the masonry of the old temple shook with the rumblings of the Force.

"I seem to have spoken out of turn."

The black-clad Sith seethed. "Indeed. I am your only conduit to something even moderately resembling a life after you leave Yavin, so my suggestion is that you answer my questions."

"Very well; we can circle back around to sentimental topics later. Essentially, the _Chimaera_ was destroyed; several essential functionalities were either disabled or compromised beyond repair. Six of the eight turbolasers were taken out during a dogfight with an Alliance fleet en route to Endor. Once we arrived, the Death Star had been destroyed - but when we attempted to flee, the generator had been damaged."

To anyone else, this would have made perfect sense.

Vader's hand could be seen in almost every major design of each ship the Empire utilized. There was not a single design characteristic or idiosyncrasy of which he did not possess technical knowledge.

As with all things Thrawn had ever done, however, the disabling of his own flagship had been purposeful. Did the admiral think that this would not be immediately obvious? Vader chose to play the fool.

"You were able to make it as far as Teth. That is a fair distance from Endor, obviously."

Thrawn offers a wan half-smile. "We got lucky. The complement of TIE Fighters in my command were able to mop up the hangers-on from the Alliance fleet, and we had pulled away from Endor's atmosphere enough to remain aloft that I was able to substantiate three hyperspace jumps. Once we crossed into Wild Space, and shortly before Teth, I cut the power from the generator by less than half; this allowed the _Chimaera_ to perpetuate movement on only three of seven main engine units."

"This information only begs the question: why did you not simply leave? Teth would have been, frankly, the perfect hiding place."

"My crew was down from forty-six thousand to a skeleton of twenty-nine thousand. A vessel of that size, as you know, requires a minimum of thirty-seven thousand to maintain minimum mechanical health."

"Again" Vader growled "why did you not end their suffering? Where are they now?"

Thrawn sits back, abandoning his strict Imperial posture. "They are dead, Lord Vader."

"What was their fate?"

"Those who remained aboard the _Chimaera_ were immolated in Teth's atmosphere."

Vader's anger has never been more palatable. Beyond the single-sided observation transparisteel, Han and Mon Mothma wince.

"You murdered your own crew, abandoned your post, and knowingly sent them to their deaths."

"Is that not how we do things in the Empire, my Lord? And is it not also our way to remain unaffected by these failures, even when the cost includes the lives of our subordinates?"

They stare at each other for what seems to be an eternity. Thrawn knows exactly what he is doing; his Force signature glows a devastating ruby, like a rare garnet in the perfect light. Vader, for his part, is enraged that the bastard Chiss has successfully played him at his own game. Both men know that Vader cannot answer this question without surrendering his own long-held beliefs that the Empire must endure even at the expense of those who serve it; to say otherwise would firmly implant him in the same camp as the Alliance, and he had to save face with Thrawn. The Chiss was undoubtedly guilty of war crimes and those consequences would be fatal, but Thrawn would not die the victor in this battle of wills. Vader needed to be the victor; for the sake of his son and their new Jedi Order, and for the sake of whatever remained of the galaxy.

"You" he began, the respirator giving him a brassy quality to his already cutting baritone "You knowingly disabled your ship. There is no possibility to cause damage to the generator externally. Did you sabotage your own flagship?"

"Ah, I see now that I underestimated your acumen. I thought that the Alliance would have obscured your ability toward critical thinking."

"I would say that the Empire's defeat suited that purpose for you; any stormtrooper stationed on an I-Class ship would have known this. Why?"

Thrawn takes a deep, steadying breath. His Force signature now thrums with an intense sensation of trepidation; he is concerned, which Vader uses to his advantage. "You knew that you would be found eventually, especially if you attempted to destroy your ship. You killed thousands of beings, Admiral Thrawn, and for what reason?"

"To put an end to my tenure, Lord Vader. I had milked the Empire dry; there was nothing left."

"Nothing" Vader drawled dryly "except for Vanto. Your _toy_."

Thrawn's face turned a terrifying shade of purple, his once-stentorian voice barely above a whisper. "You wouldn't dare."

"Oh, I would." Vader stands, walking behind Thrawn and placing both hands on his well-tailored shoulders. "You had mistakenly thought that the Emperor would forgive you of the sedition you employed by grooming young Commander Vanto; that he would be untouchable were he to cast his lot with the Chiss Ascendancy. A clever plan, but you know that my master had a gift for precognition. He had anticipated you would betray him, and use the Empire as a means to your own foolish end. You had thought - and please do stop me if I am mistaken - that you would fire the _Chimaera_ , ensure that its crew were all dead, and return to Csilla to live out the remainder of your days solving psychological puzzles with your apple-cheeked twink officer - and that I would be none the wiser. Am I correct?"

"I hope your soul is spread throughout all the nine hells."

Vader blithely continues, choosing not to acknowledge that Thrawn was now visibly quaking with rage. "Naturally, Commander Eli Vanto was recovered from Wild Space and eventually killed. His lithe, youthful body has now been cold for approximately two standard weeks. Odd, how there was new life injected into my tired limbs just as Commander Vanto's were stilled forever."

Thrawn whirls around and attempts to strike Darth Vader, but the Chiss soon remembered the binders locking his wrists. A sickening crunch of bone and sinew sound, and the blue-skinned tactician screams in sudden pain.

"You would not live, were the choice mine. Fortunately, the Alliance is merciful where I am not."

Thrawn screams through the waves of agony. "But you were heartbroken to learn of the fate of the _Chimaera's_ crew! You were never Sith, and you were never a true equal of the Emperor! Long live the Chiss! Long live the Empire!"

It was grotesquely uncharacteristic of Thrawn to completely lose his ability to think and speak rationally, and Vader's patience had reached an abrupt end. Mothma and Solo had attempted to enter the room with a med droid to tend to the prisoner, but he had locked the door from inside the interrogation room. Without much fanfare, Vader whirled around and began to Force choke Thrawn.

The Chiss grasped at his neck to no avail; a whirl of sound and light sent shadows over the terror-stricken features of his face as alarms began to sound and the lights were cut.

There would be no one to see what Darth Vader did next, and it was just as well.

In the end, the lights came on. Mon Mothma and Han Solo stood and stared at Vader, who in turn regarded the slumped stump of a corpse still in a seated position in the durasteel chair - his wrists were still in binders, he looked serene and peaceful.

Regrettably, Grand Admiral Thrawn's uniform - pristine at the beginning of their meeting, a gift from the late Emperor - was now speckled with blood.

Even more than his scarlet eyes now resided in his lap; a shame, that a man who so valued what he observed in life would be unable to find his way to hell.


	10. alight with newfound purpose, the viper twists and dances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thrawn - and slowly, like honey dripping from the lid of a cup - the remnants of the Empire are snuffed out with him. Darth Vader considers what must come next.
> 
> Obi-Wan Kenobi appears.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A fresh update! I've been thinking about this scene for a while. I may edit, as this wasn't perhaps as plaintive as it could have been. Let me know what you think.
> 
> This is the first of several chapters which will showcase a change in Vader. I'm not going to completely alter his personality and beliefs, but some development needs to happen in order to prepare him for life on Ahch-To.

Blood has a taste. Even when it hangs, belabored and damning in the air, it has a taste; Vader had forgotten this in the years he spent imprisoned in his former life support suit, but now that he is liberated of its inhibiting technology with his own ability to receive sensory information, he remembers.

The iron, the pungent decay of it, hangs in the air for days after Thrawn's body is taken out of the interrogation room. Alliance leaders agreed that Leia would inform the Senate that the circumstances around Grand Admiral Thrawn's death were that he was killed in an inadvertent scuffle with flesh-eating indigenous fauna. Mon Mothma tells Vader that Thrawn was his prisoner to exact justice, as he was one of the uppermost commanding officers of the Imperial Navy. The Alliance would fare well regardless of the manner in which Thrawn was dealt with, and although his death was irrefutably inhumane by all Galactic standards, the Alliance would not bear down any further punishment upon him.

Vader would, however, go with Luke to Ahch-To with immediacy. This proved both a comfort and condemnation in equal measure, and while he relished the prospect of time spent with his son in communion with the Force, he realizes now as the sun rises and shoots tributaries of dazzling hues over the mountains beyond the base, he does not know him.

Thrawn is buried in an unmarked grave some dozen clicks to the south from the base. The Chiss Ascendancy was sent a furtive apology from both the Senate and the Alliance; Leia was working to ensure that there would be no further inquiries after his death. As Vader had not been called to offer any additional information, he assumed that his daughter, the new Senator, had been successful. Sidelong glances from Mothma, coupled with her increasing misgivings he was able to feel through the Force, signaled to him that it was nearly time to take his son and begin afresh. Mothma would never understand why Thrawn's death had been necessary; this was a man who could have revived the Empire with far more ardor than even Vader himself.

News of innumerable scuffles around the galaxy - typically in the Outer Rim or further, near Teth where Thrawn had fled - filtered through the base. Imperial moffs were, as Vader predicted, vying for power and prestige among what was left of the Galactic Empire. Yavin IV's base was nearly eerie in how few bodies remained after a large detachment had been sent to Ryloth and the border of the Outer Rim and the Unknown Regions. Many would not return. Their departure had been a somber affair, taking place on the same day that Leia left for Coruscant. Luke had become unduly emotional; Vader cringed when he realized just how alike they were.

And just like that, the light of the greatest war the galaxy had ever known is snuffed out. It is nearly safe for the Alliance to leave the Massassi temples, retrofitted for their purpose, and find a better equipped base on Chandrila. Ahsoka Tano lingered in doorways and leaned against bulkheads, tinkering with a new lightsaber she had built in exile but for which she had never acquired the correct components until a spontaneous trip to Christophsis yielded a new crystal. A green crystal, like Luke's.

Luke had gone with her. They had returned, but informed Vader that they needed to make their own preparations before going to Ahch-To and had thus departed for something of a retreat. Vader recognized the hunger in Luke for knowledge of the Force, and Ahsoka was as learned as any Jedi Master.

This left the Sith to his own thoughts and ruminations, an introspective jaunt which proved painful and revealing.

He could not be Jedi. Unable and unwilling to turn Luke or Ahsoka, and with the task of finding a Sensitive individual who wished to take up the Sith tradition, he could only be a Sith Lord in name. It was now a didactic title, a thing of antiquated and meaningless designation he only uses to assert some kind of dominance when in conversation with Mothma and the other Alliance officers. Now that they have exhausted every possible question they could ask, and now that they are using that knowledge to continue their purge of the remaining strains of Imperial influence, he is left to physical therapy and meditation.

If Vader could be neither Sith nor Jedi, then what would he become? What would Luke do when he informed him of this, and how would Ahsoka react to her once-proud master admitting his lack of guidance in the Force?

"You could simply be _Anakin_ " came a familiar voice from behind. Vader turns around slowly, greeted by a painfully familiar visage draped in blue, sadness emanating from the visitant in great waves which nearly bring him to his knees.

"Obi-Wan."

The Force presence of his once-beloved master nods. "I was hesitant to search for you here. Afraid of what I would find, I suppose."

Vader steels himself, recovering quickly. "And is what you have found a disappointment?"

Kenobi straightens his back. An old posturing defiance he employed when his apprentice would torment him with rebelliousness. "I am neither encouraged nor disturbed."

"You always did favor riddles."

"And how shall I react" Kenobi probes, his voice already laced with impatience "many years have passed. Your son is a Jedi; your Empire lies in ruins. Still you remain, after all that has happened. I am truly unsure as to how I should react."

"What would Yoda say?" Vader knows he's being unfair, but part of him wants to cut to the heart of why Kenobi would still be inclined to appear to him.

"He would tell me to leave you well enough alone. But I cannot - I - there are so many things I would say to you, and suddenly none of them make sense. Suddenly none of the apologies I would offer, the anger I would illustrate, are a sufficient amount to explain my disdain, my weakness, my regret. My love."

 _Can love be found in the dark?_ Mothma's question burns in a corner of Vader's brain he doesn't wish to acknowledge.

"Ahsoka Tano" Kenobi continues carefully "badly desires to believe that you can turn away from the darkness. Even your own daughter, adrift in the Force and in her destiny though she may be, would ultimately give everything to see that you do. Your efforts to restore the galaxy to its proper balance are commendable, but what you did before - as Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith - are sins not easily forgiven. You will run for the remainder of your life, such as it will be on Ahch-To, and you will face the blackness of your familial legacy someday. It will catch up with you, my lord. And when it does, I cannot bear to watch its terror."

Vader sighs, falling into a chair in his sparse quarters. Kenobi remains standing, towering over him. The monument to all his sins.

"I regret ending your life" the Sith admits, slowly. "Your counsel was taken earnestly by Luke."

"My _counsel_ " he spits "was taken as would a vulture pick apart a rotted corpse. He hears what he wishes, and discards the rest. Much like his father."

"And is that such a bad thing, to want a new Order for a new galaxy?"

Kenobi stills. "Did that philosophy serve you well in the creation of your Empire?"

If his old master had come to begin a battle of veiled insults, he was certainly fulfilling that desire. The blue apparition clenches and unclenches his fists; Kenobi was not this reactionary in life, but in death he seemed to divest himself of his famous decorum. It is only right, after all; Vader had cut him down in front of his son to harm them both. To prove a point. Now that Obi-Wan stood before him, one with the Living Force as Jinn had undoubtedly taught to all the learned Master Jedi (there had been ample evidence of this as Vader had turned his attention to Dagobah and Yoda many years prior), there was no pretense now. The raw miasma of Obi-Wan's intentions - thickly protected and indeed insulated by what was at present unbridled anger and sorrow - reached out to Vader, pulled him in with all the power of the Death Star's most cunning engineering and sciences. Vader did not wish to quarrel with his former master, but after everything that had happened and the veritable torrent of betrayal between them, what else was there?

"I do not wish to perpetuate the belief that I killed you for a purpose. I felt then that you had betrayed me, yes. I feel now that you have taken an interest in Luke to rebuild the once-stately position of the Jedi when you studied under Master Jinn. I also feel that is unwise, and will do nothing to bring peace to the galaxy. Its tenets were destructive. Attachment and connection rests at the heart of what propels the galaxy."

"And do you believe that your love for Padme Amidala was not destructive? Every battle fought during the Clone Wars, every diplomatic mission, every breath you drew was for her. And the worst part is that you believed no one knew; that no one could sense the turmoil within you, that no other Jedi could have comprehended the love you bore for her. It simply wasn't so."

Vader's mind is bruised enough. This new information - that Kenobi had known, had offered nothing beyond his typical condescension and warnings against the temptations of attachment - pressed on his already exhausted mental faculties even more. "Had I told you that we were married, what would you have done?"

"I would have expelled you from the Jedi Order and taken your lightsaber."

"In the middle of a war?"

"If that is what was necessary."

Vader rakes a gloved hand over his eyes, massaging his temples.

"That is the reason the Jedi in their previous iteration must end. You would have put the galaxy at risk for a tired law; a philosophy which you yourself knew could be proven untrue due to your own dalliances with Satine."

Kenobi does not speak to this. The aura of him turns from an enraged red to a somber shade of blue; his Force signature thrums with understanding, and perhaps even regret of his own. Vader finds that he cannot read him as readily as he would a man of flesh and bone, but the overarching sensations he can grasp signal that Kenobi is at least willing to admit his own faults.

"I loved her" he admits. "I won't deny that. The difference is that I didn't marry her. And I certainly didn't seek absolution and adulation in the superficial friendships of politicians."

Vader's relationship with then-Chancellor Palpatine had provided no end of tension between them during the Clone Wars. Aside from Padme, Palpatine's safety and happiness had been a secondary though no less meaningful priority to Vader. Keeping them both safe, treasuring them both, had been paramount to his survival during those wars. He had loved Palpatine similarly, and it is a secret which he will carry to the grave. Kenobi knows this, and wisely says nothing further.

"At any rate, I cannot ask for your forgiveness, master. I can ask that you not interfere with the work Luke and I must do now that the Empire has been destroyed. Your old sensibilities have no place among the living; let them die with the old Order. Let a new dawn emerge, and let me do my utmost to see that its light touches those who would call themselves Jedi in the future."

This seems to placate Kenobi. There is no apologizing and no forgiveness for the death that he gave him. It was cruel and possibly the worst of the atrocities Vader had committed. Even so, Vader feels Kenobi's still-intact love for his former apprentice, and that he could still love Vader after that is perhaps a sign that the old Order is not as broken as was once believed.

"Anakin, there will be one final Skywalker. The line will end sooner than you think. Do not fail in this new attempt, for it will be what brings the galaxy together. One last conflict, for which you must be amply prepared, will cause you to question everything you believe about the Force - your loved ones. Seek your absolution now where you may. I cannot offer it myself."

Kenobi disappears, leaving Vader to thoughts both comforting and twisted. He may yet appear to Luke in the coming days, and for his sake Vader hopes that is true. Even still, he knows that he will not be able to see Obi-Wan again; it is just recompense for the death he dealt him, the damage it wrought against a once-infallible bond.

Almost two decades later, he is still paying dearly for Mustafar.

In his grief, he is joyful at least to hear the name Anakin again, and this surprises him.

Rising from his chair in greater strength than he had been prior to Kenobi's appearance, Vader packs a rucksack and goes to find Luke and Ahsoka.

It is time.


	11. light reflects upon his scales

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the fallout of Thrawn's death, Vader turns his attention to Ahch-To and the work he must do with Luke. Ahsoka decides to join them. 
> 
> A conversation between master and apprentice is had; Luke requests they make a painful stop on their way to the secluded oceanic planet.

It takes three standard days to find Luke and Ahsoka. It is monsoon season on Yavin IV, and their hideout in the mouth of a cave is functional enough to keep them alive, but they are worse for wear in ways Vader had not anticipated.

Luke appears hollow. His eyes are haloed by aggressive sleeplessness, and Ahsoka's usual shade of blue has been reduced to something utterly pastel. Wordlessly, Darth Vader tosses the rucksack of supplies down between them. Luke lunges forward to rifle through its contents, but Ahsoka shoots her hand out.

"No" she mutters simply, her eyes still closed in meditation.

Luke and Vader trade looks of confusion. Luke slowly moves away from the pack, resuming his own meditations. Seeing nothing else he can do, Vader sits down and joins them.

Seconds, minutes, days, hours. Time does not matter while in full concert with the Force, and when their eyes open simultaneously once more, the light from the mouth of the cave has faded into a single sliver of fading brightness. Torches along the craggy wall of the rock gutter with a soundless, undetectable wind.

"I cannot go" Luke whistles through muted vocalizations which barely sound like words. Vader winces.

"Why?" he asks plainly. Luke, a new Jedi, and perhaps unaware of the many futures and outcomes he is able to see spun through the fibers of the Force, only shrugs.

"There are aspects of the Force which still require reconciliation. The residual effects of the Empire's tyranny remain tightly interwoven into the tapestry of the galaxy; how can I leave when there is more work to be done?"

Vader takes a shuddering, steadying breath. His son is a hero; perhaps more deserving of the title Hero With No Fear than his sire ever was, his desire to see his work through to completion is equal parts encouraging and frustrating.

"I disagree" Ahsoka cuts in, speaking Vader's own thoughts. "Senator Organa will guide the Senate into a new age. Once they have regained control of the Core and, at the very least, the Mid Rim planets, the rest will fall in line. The Alliance operatives who were sent to the Outer Rim will weed out the remaining Imperial sympathizers. Our work is different, Luke."

It would be easier to throw himself into the non-metaphysical labor of rebuilding the body politic of the galaxy, but that is not where any of their destinies lie. Darth Vader himself was never fond of the political games Palptine so loved, begrudgingly attending galas and Empire Days, watching as bloated senators and diplomats heaped laud and honor onto the Emperor for his policies and the might of the Navy. That game was easier to play, which is why Palpatine preferred it. The work done within the Force - behind the curtain of the truths it hid - was not easy. It was exhausting, the ritual work Palpatine had described with Plagueis and Dooku sounded like mental gymnastics and Sith sorcery so arcane their results would not be worth the investment the work demanded. Luke, his son and his heir in the Force, clearly wished to do what was easy; not necessarily what was right.

This is not an attitude befitting a Jedi Master. Since this is what Luke will become someday (Vader does not feel he has earned that title yet, which is a taste of irony so bitter it explains entirely why the old Order needed to die), and it is just as unbecoming now as it was when the then-Jedi Skywalker fought in the Clone Wars.

He is young, and too much like his father.

Ahsoka divides the rations between them. There is enough in the pack for two more days, although Vader does not wish to tarry longer than necessary in the cave.

"I have been cleared of any wrongdoing in Grand Admiral Thrawn's death" he begins, slowly. Luke's eyebrows jump; Ahsoka remains silent.

"Our departure for Ahch-To must occur when we return to the base."

Luke relaxes his shoulders and slowly turns his head to lock eyes with Ahsoka.

"We already have a ship" she says evenly, biting into the nutrition bar she pulled from the rucksack. "And a pilot." She motions to Luke, who nods with the first signs of surety Vader has seen since their unfortunate discussion in the rainy grove. Ahsoka rolls the ration around in her mouth, cringes, and spits it onto the fecund ground. She had a taste of something akin to luxury on Yavin IV; Vader idly wonders if perhaps she hasn't gone a bit soft. Ahch-To will change that.

"We knew you would come when Leia was gone, and after most of the Alliance had gone. I - we can't go to Ahch-To immediately after leaving Yavin. There is one place in particular I need to go." Luke speaks with the wisdom of a man who has long since held the title of Master, but beneath the confidence lies an unshakable sadness. Not unlike what Vader felt when Kenobi appeared to him, Vader leans forward.

"Explain."

Luke wastes no time. "Naboo."

Darth Vader's blood runs cold.

"No."

Ahsoka opens her mouth, thinks on whatever she was about to say, and closes it again. Vader's black gloved hand falls heavily on Luke's surprisingly solid shoulder. He meets his son's eyes, knowing full well what his son wants, but unable to explain why he cannot afford to offer it.

"Your mother was and remains the only bright spot in anything I ever did as a Jedi. Her memory must be the cornerstone of what we built, but to return to Naboo is not possible for me. You are free to do so while I establish a base of operations on Ahch-To; but it is an errand of the heart in which I cannot attend you, my son."

Luke is crestfallen. Of course he couldn't possibly understand the implications of what he is asking Vader to do.

There are elements of Vader's early life, prior to his Fall, which must remain deeply embedded and protected against Luke's Force-driven quests. Palpatine's homeworld, its significance to both his relationship with Padme and the former Emperor, had to be safeguarded lest they be used against him by whomever decides to join their new Order. Luke could potentially come to accept that he loved them both - the Light and the Dark, and that both of them possessed measures of either side.

"There is a tomb where she is interred along with other members of her royal house. You are a prince on technicality, although the House of Lords on Naboo would not recognize you for peerage. There would only be heartache for you there, Luke. I do not wish to see your potential blighted by the things they would say, knowing that you are the heir to Darkness just as you are to Light."

"But no one ever told them of your union with Padme - with mother."

"There is a record of our marriage" Vader says on a sigh. "Palpatine knew well to leverage that knowledge against me when and if he needed to. That cruelty remains even after his death. If you are recognized as Padme Amidala's son, it would undo every heroic act you accomplished in the name of the Alliance."

Luke considers this. Vader feels that he understands; Ahsoka remains silent, content to allow this moment between father and son to come to fruition. All three Jedi share in a moment of silence.

"I still can't go to Ahch-To. Not yet."

Ahsoka rises carefully, dusting off the front of her trousers and looking toward the mouth of the cave. Darth Vader senses unease and anxiety. "Master Luke, you are a Jedi Knight. For a time, you were the only known Jedi in the galaxy; with my escape from exile and Lord Vader's Turn to the Light, you are not alone. I can understand why you would feel the need to connect to a memory, but that is all that remains of Padme Amidala. She is a memory. A beloved one, but a vapor all the same."

A memory reaches forth from the abyss in Vader's mind - a scent of moon lavender with which she had adorned their pillows in her senatorial apartment on Coruscant and for which he had given her no end of jest. Luke bears a stronger resemblance to his father, but in his eyes now he can plainly see Padme staring back at them.

"I have never been to the tomb" Vader offers. "Her memory was enough to torture me for the choices I had made, but perhaps a reunion of sorts will give you the strength necessary to go to Ahch-To. Even still, I cannot accompany you. I am sorry, Luke."

It is one more way that Vader has failed his son in recent days. The death of Thrawn had been a necessary act, and indeed his last as a Sith lord. The information he gave to the Alliance was balm enough to soothe Leia's grand misgivings about her father before she left to serve in the Senate, and Ahsoka - brave, strong, fully-grown Ahsoka, his only student and the last remaining bastion of his former life as a Jedi - would follow him as much as student as she would be a gatekeeper; a protector.

Luke finishes his portion of the rations they had begun eating and takes his leave to run diagnostics on the ship Ahsoka had secured. Alone with his former padawan in the cave, Vader rises; nearly two heads taller than she, he looks down at her with no small amount of skepticism.

"I assumed that you would support him in this" the Sith says, pointing at the center of the young Togruta's chest. "I am surprised that you would convince him otherwise."

Ahsoka slings her own pack over her shoulder, hip cocked out - the very picture of her youngling self. "Our time here was spent in solemn contemplation. He feels badly that he attacked you, but he also knows that there is more to his story than you will ever tell him. I don't want to see Luke go down a path to help you redeem yourself, however much he may be able to do so, without tending to his own substantial emotional wounds first. He knows intellectually that he cannot heal you; but he will try. He loves you."

Vader quirks an eyebrow. "And you?"

Their friendship had been uneasy at first; he remembers when she first came to Coruscant, full of bright fire and an unshakable thirst for knowledge. Always seeking to prove herself, Ahsoka quickly amassed a reputation among the Jedi Masters of being as fearless as Anakin, without the reckless selfishness. Vader sees that she is far more invested in the notion of Luke finding his way and learning his history than she is helping to heal Vader himself. This bothers him, though he does not know why.

"I want you both to learn to move forward. When something cataclysmic occurs, when a major victory is won, what is the first thing that follows?"

Vader smiles, remembering this exact lesson he taught her long ago. "Aimlessness."

"Exactly." Ahsoka turns to go, Vader picking up his rucksack and following. "What is left for him? Leia is gone, Han and Chewbacca with her. His family, the only one he knew, are gone. Your Empire killed them. His friends are dead, and the ones who remain alive may not stay that way for long because the Alliance bade them go to the far corners of the galaxy to fight the last of your destructive dream. He will likely never see them again. Because of this, he needs something onto which he can hold; something that he can call his own. Padme's tomb is as good as any living person to him."

A gust of wind finds its way beyond the mouth of the cave as they emerge into the dark of night, the lights of the transport cruiser - an aesthetic monstrosity which pre-dated the Clone Wars, but which will doubtlessly serve them well - blink against the pitch black mist. Darth Vader feels a decidedly human chill, though not only a reaction to the climate. Around them the air threatens further rains, creating an ethereal otherworld as a fitting illustration of the heart of their discussion. Padme is mist, now; dry bones in a durasteel crypt. What good would she do Luke now?

"And I know why you served him. The Emperor. He loved you as Padme did, didn't he?"

Vader can offer information and clarification for most of his actions; he finds that his tongue stiffens when he attempts to answer Ahsoka about this small pinprick in time. It had coursed through his life as would any smaller tributary leading to a vast sea, but the imprint of his bond with Palpatine had never fully left him. To be called out on it now wouldn't bother most, but he can still feel the currents of the Force Lightning his master had used against his son. He still remembered the ancient rasping cries Palpatine had made as his brittle body fell.

"He was enamored of my potential in the Force."

"He was enamored, and General Kenobi was envious."

A column of light shoots before them from the landing gear of the transport, the platform extending down to inches before their toes. "Kenobi was besotted with the Council and with the Jedi Order as it was; he had no such feelings for me."

Ahsoka knows that this is a lie. There had at one time been entanglements; she heard in dank, dark corners of the lower levels of Coruscant that a tall, tanned warrior clad in simple robes would meet a shorter, slighter figure hidden behind a low, jet black velvet mantle. They would retreat in silence and emerge, hours later, breathless. How the Force howled around her when she learned this, and how Kenobi had howled when she told him.

"You will not tell Luke of my youthful indiscretions. They will not serve him; they have no meaning."

Ahsoka walks with him shoulder-to-shoulder as they board the transport. "No, they will not serve Luke. But you may find peace in revisiting them, as they have meaning to _you_. You are the one who owns those experiences. And after killing the Emperor -"

Thankfully, Luke emerges from the cockpit just then. He hadn't heard what they had been discussing, and it's a path down which Vader lacks the mental fortitude to tread with Ahsoka at that particular moment. Their destination was already weighing heavily on his mind - seeing Padme's final resting place cast dark and menacing shadows dancing against the years-old shields between his conscience and the carefully-constructed fortitude of his youth. Approaching middle age, Vader wonders if perhaps this new era of his life didn't demand a certain reverence in the face of the unspeakable terror he created.

"You didn't kill Padme" Ahsoka cautiously points out as they take their places in the bay behind the cockpit. Luke's abilities are more than sufficient to deliver them to Naboo, and the hyperspace routes do not require forethought. The transport has a healthy complement of weaponry should they encounter any hostility, though Vader does not foresee this. Content to leave his son to his own ruminations, Vader considers Ahsoka's statement.

"I know. My choices immediately prior to her death did not help, however."

"You did, on the other hand, kill the Emperor. There's something to be said for that."

Vader's former padawan remained ambiguous in her regard of him; he could sense a storm of confusion building behind her eyes, streaming through the Force like a dam that had broken and whose reservoir was flooding everything it touched upstream. With nothing else to do until their arrival, Vader rolls the dice.

"He was my master and my keeper. Toward the end of his life, his obsessive nature found a home in Luke."

"Why?" Ahsoka pours Corellian whisky from a flask strapped to the inside of her bomber jacket. Darth Vader takes the glass, turning it around in an ungloved hand with syntheskin he still does not recognize as his own. It is not an easy question to answer, because it is painful. He is unused to feeling this kind of pain, but stripped of his suit and his Dark Side proclivities, he finds that there are deep wells of it which still live within him.

"He saw the potential in Luke that had left me when I was injured on Mustafar. He saw, for all intents and purposes, a better, stronger, _whole_ Anakin Skywalker. Thankfully, my son is nothing like his sire where it counts."

"Thank the Force for small miracles" Ahsoka laughs, taking a thoughtful swig of whisky. "But what I was saying before - killing him did something to you. Something similar to what happened when Padme died, I'd wager."

"We were bonded after a fashion. Darth Sidious - Palpatine - never abandoned his fervent hope that I would rise above my injuries and assume the connection we maintained before my Turn. In many ways, he was not a master as much as he was a caretaker. Our partnership made a mockery of the Rule of Two in that way. An apprentice is supposed to overthrow his master; but it took Luke's near death at his hands before I was even minutely tempted. We were - content to live as we had. I failed him, as well."

"You needed both of them" Ahsoka says as though discovering some great truth. And it was, in its own right; Vader had always maintained a purposeful vagary bordering on the aloof when it came to his relationship with Palpatine. It was difficult to explain. Burdened by tension and no small measure of guilt on both sides, the Emperor could have - and should have - left Vader to die on that hotbed of ash on Mustafar and found an apprentice better able to realize his plans. But he didn't, and like Vader, Palpatine's actions were jettisoned by a certain love for his apprentice. Kinship is not a value held in high regard in Sith culture, but their relationship - their friendship - flagrantly denied and broke all of those rules. And so Vader had needed Padme's love, as deep and wide as the oceans of Kamino; and he had needed Palpatine's unbridled lauding of him and the way the Force seemed to scream in response to everything Anakin was and did.

"I killed the Emperor because I loved Luke more." It is an oversimplification and Ahsoka knows it, but she does not prod him further. That answer - the only answer Ahsoka would accept - is enough.

"Had you been to Naboo to see the tomb?"

Vader takes his first sip of whisky. It burns as it slides down his throat; a sensation he hadn't felt in two decades. It almost makes him cry out in pleasure, this seemingly insignificant act of _drinking_. "I had made an attempt on the Empire Day which had been held on Naboo, some eleven Standard years ago. The Emperor insisted that I let the past remain where it lies, and at the time, I felt that was wise counsel. Thinking on it - on her - would have disrupted our plans and weakened me."

Ahsoka finishes her glass and pours another. "Luke wants this not just because of his mother. He needs this because of what the Empire did to his aunt and uncle on Tatooine. He's trying to reconcile the trauma he's lived through so that he _can_ be useful on Ahch-To, but he's torn because he feels that he can still be of further use to the Alliance. It's all he's known for the last several years."

"A Jedi he may be, but he is no Master yet. I am glad to hear that he was able to air his concerns with you."

"I'll defer to you where that's concerned" Ahsoka concedes, grumbling.

They finish their whisky and speak of more companionable, less heady things. Sometimes they talk about the Clone Wars and their missions together; they discuss what it was like adjusting to Temple life. When Ahsoka talks about Plo-Koon and others, he feels ill. Order 66 killed them all. That is what he regrets most, above all other atrocities: destroying the Jedi.

Thankfully, they do not discuss his murder of the younglings. He may never be able to voice his sorrow over that monumental affront to humanity, and it's just as well. There are things Ahsoka cannot say to Darth Vader; there are things Darth Vader cannot admit to Ahsoka. The each know where the line is, but dance back and forth, nearly touching it but shying away when they get too close. It will always be this way, he realizes.

Even as they painstakingly navigate these things, Vader feels the rapport they enjoyed during the Clone Wars slowly rebuilding and regenerating with each passing moment. Ahsoka's Force signature ebbs and flows around questions she still feels the need to ask but cannot bring herself to breach. Throughout, Vader senses the distance closing between their location and Naboo. A familiar ache in the pit of his stomach begins to grow until he feels feverish with pain.

Padme Amidala is not a subject he wishes to broach with his son. Their marriage and life together were impossibly complicated due to the Jedi Order's prohibition of attachments, but even deeper than that, Vader is acutely aware of having been an abysmally poor husband.

"I manipulated Padme. Her love for me was unconditional; I wielded it like a lightsaber instead of treasuring it as a gift. When she told me that she was pregnant, it seemed that would bind us even more. I could not be without her. It was this belief, this insane need of her, that drove me to do everything I did. To see Luke revere her will be difficult."

Ahsoka lays a shaking hand on Vader's knee. "There is no going back. I may never forgive you, but I can try to understand. If we are to rebuild an Order on Ahch-To, I must meet you where you stand."

This is not so much of a comfort to Vader as it is a prison sentence. There are things he has done - horrible, unmentionable things which can never be spoken aloud - which he did of his own volition entirely. Things which he had willed and executed apart from the Emperor's desire. Those are the things for which he will spend the remainder of his life atoning, but perhaps if Ahsoka is willing to acknowledge they exist without actively vilifying him, this new phase of his life will have been worth the trouble.

He will always be Sith. In some dark corner of his heart, he cannot deny the naked truth of his actions. Elsewhere, his soul still sings with the Force; sings with Light. In him lies a balance, and Ahsoka sees this. Luke will come to know the truth of it as well, and perhaps be a better man for it. A better Jedi.

When the blue swirls of hyperspace greet the view port of the ship, Vader joins his son in the cockpit. He requires little sleep, though the newly synthetic organic components in his body require rest as much if not more than the organs with which he had parted on the black shores of Mustafar. He should sleep, but their destination's weight rests heavily in the pit of his stomach. Luke either does not wish to discuss nor acknowledge this weight, because his eyes remain intently adhered to the technical readouts on the navicomputer. Vader finds this tactic somewhat endearing.

"I don't hate you" he finally says. "I don't even think Leia hates you."

"Perhaps you and your sister ought to."

Luke abruptly turns to his father. "What good would that do?"

The tall, black-clad Sith slumps into the copilot's bucket seat. It is uncomfortable against his new skin, the ramrod straightness of the repaired portions of his spine. How can he command or mentor or teach anything when he is still learning to move? There was nothing he could say in response to Luke's query. Suddenly, and for the first time in many years, Vader feels shockingly inadequate.

"You're not that person anymore. You are not Darth Vader."

Luke's phenomenal ability toward forgiveness could be his undoing. The man formerly-and-almost-now known as Anakin Skywalker sits opposite him, unable to conceive of anything to say.

"You're not" Luke repeats "and maybe going to Naboo is not what you want, but it is what you need."

When they arrive in orbit around Naboo, the sun is just cresting the atmosphere. Over the blinking controls and panels in the cockpit, Luke snakes his hand to graze that of his father. There's too much color and an excess of sensation for Vader to process, but he knows then that his son is correct. The moment is almost cloyingly poetic, but he relaxes despite the nausea its creates. He lets his son offer him a comfort he does not deserve, and when he calls him _Anakin_ as they begin their descent, Vader can only relish in the stillness he feels when the familiar name washes over him. He may dislike it tomorrow; he may hate it when his boots hit the Naboo soil, but it is enough in this moment.


	12. fear the serpent, black as night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leia's first term in the Senate begins, and acclimating to senatorial apartments, galas, and engagements elsewhere than the war front prove difficult for both she and Han. Covering up her father's indiscretions on Yavin lead to an interesting encounter in the mid-levels of Coruscant.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Of course there has to be some political intrigue. I resurrected a popular character in the only way I knew I could get away with it. 
> 
> NO THERE AREN'T TAGS. If I kill off a major character, there will be tags. Until then, calm thyself.

"This body does _not_ recognize the representative from Naboo."

Leia's frown deepens. She knows that, despite her colorful garments and tasteful adornments, she looks tired. It has not taken long for the news to make the rounds among the Coruscanti elite that she and General Han Solo have returned to resume decidedly more diplomatic duties. Even so, as decorated war veterans and vanquishers of the infamous Death Star, she receives no special treatment when it comes to the creaking cogs of democracy. It is also entirely possible that, as her home planet no longer exists, Naboo was given to her due to the comparable socioeconomic structure and planetary resources to Alderaan - certainly not because her mother was Padme Amidala. Her heart aches when she thinks of it; she imagines it will always be this way. Longing for a home she can never see again; forever attempting to create 'home' wherever she and Han reside, but always coming up short. She can also tell that Han is the least enamored with their new life by comparison. He attends the galas and luncheons and dinner parties, but even as Leia wears form-fitting dresses that make her look like a constellation all unto herself, his face is a mask of stony reserve even when he hurls her around the marble dance floors in the homes of affluent beings. It is a brave new world - and she is unsure as to whether or not they will be able to adapt enough to carve out a space for themselves.

She had introduced a motion which, had it passed, would have ensured the allocation of needed funds to the worlds most ravaged by the Empire. As it was, the revitalized Senate (which officially cast itself as the Senate of the New Republic) was still vying for control of the Empire's wealth. Clandestine operations, which had been regulated to near extinction as perhaps the only positive benefit of the Empire's control, had returned and demanded recompense. Refugees by the billions had been displaced all across the galaxy. There were whispers of several pockets of Imperial sympathizers in the Core; until they were dealt with, there could be no relief for the rest of the galaxy. Leia turned to her page - a whip smart Naboo woman named Calinda Molaven - and nodded in resignation. Wordlessly, Calinda hit a few keys on the pod from which Leia had just given her final appeal of the Senate's decision. It floated back into place, locked, and as the bright-eyed young woman from Naboo looked at Leia with anticipation, all the new young senator could do was watch as the senatorial proceedings continued. It was as if she hadn't spoken at all.

Leia rises and walks briskly out into the corridors beyond the Senate chamber, Calinda following closely behind her. The page can barely keep up; Senator Organa hasn't moved with the grace of a princess in several years. Now, she walks as though she were inspecting X-Wings and delivering briefings. The transition from officer to politician was not a kind one, but Calinda has made the rounds with several new senators in the past. She speaks slowly, evenly, as though every word she said aloud was precious and valuable. A refugee of war herself, Calinda understands the former Alderaani princess more than most. Ousted from her home at a young age, she was taken to Coruscant whereupon her life contained a storied and sordid past. Molaven steadily worked her way up in the political ranks, eventually finding fulfillment in advising 'green' senators. Leia admires this about her, although she would have perhaps fared better with an assistant who knew something about war. Unsurprisingly, for those who wished to legislate it, politicians knew next to nothing about what war actually entailed. Possibly the worst phase of a war is the aftermath, and this is what Leia is most interested in remedying.

"Senator Organa, you should not be discouraged. I have acted as a page for many new senators, none of whom had your experience. It will take time to make them hear you."

Leia shrugs. "I admit that my introduction of the Galactic Relief Act was not timely. I can only hope that the Empire's wealth is awarded to the Senate with all due haste."

Calinda follows Leia into her offices. "My lady, please excuse my impertinence, it has not escaped my notice that perhaps your haste is due in large part to your misgivings about Lord Vader." Of course Leia had told her; she recognized early on that she needed someone to trust in the Core beyond laying the burden of truth solely at Han's feet. Suddenly she regretted that decision, but it flickered and died like a candle in a sudden wind. Leia could trust her; she had to.

"He is en route to Ahch-To with my brother, Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker. There may be others. Provided that they can establish a strong presence of Force-Sensitive beings, they may yet be of some service to the Senate. Lord Vader is completely given to his newfound allegiance to ending the Empire." It sounds like weakness and she knows it, but as with her trust in Molaven, she must also trust her father and brother. She finds that saying this aloud is more for the purpose of convincing herself, although this renews the weakness she has fought since coming to Coruscant.

"And if the Jedi decline to help the Senate?"

"Then we find another way. The Alliance is leaving Yavin and taking on a more central role in the Mid and Outer Rim territories. Imperial planetary governors are ceding control by the day; it won't be long until the last flailing remnants of the Empire's presence have been snuffed out. This will happen with or without the Jedi."

"I hope you are right, my lady. I will depart for the evening unless there is anything else you need."

Leia looks at her desk, covered in flimsis and datacards. There is always more, but the work will have to wait. She has a more pressing appointment to keep in the lower levels of Coruscant, and it is this information she cannot trust to Calinda. "No, that will be all. Thank you for speaking candidly with me. At times I feel this new position is entirely lonely." She has not told her page the truth of her parentage; that will have to wait. She does know that Vader is still alive and working with the Alliance, and that his cooperation has put Leia in a strange position. Her senatorial duties place her at a marked disadvantage should the truth ever surface, but Calinda is sworn to carry and safeguard Leia's burdens. An Alderaanian refugee, Leia is still her princess. Her fealty is unquestionable; but that does not make for a less isolating position now. Leia feels an unseen weight press down on her neck; she had been on Coruscant for mere days, and already she was struggling to maintain her own peace amidst everything that had transpired.

Calinda smiles meekly. "You are welcome, Senator." When the door whooshes closed, Leia enters a string of commands on her keypad and locks the door. Changing into nondescript civilian clothing, she makes her way out of the Senate building and sends an encrypted message to Han. He knows where she is going and with whom she is meeting; and he knows that this is dangerous, but his reply is swift. He tells her to be careful. She says she'll be home before sundown.

An equally civilian-looking speeder she can easily pilot is taken down to the lower mid-levels of the vast metropolitan city. Dubious characters with equally questionable agendas move about; there are many who would exploit the temporary disorganization of the capitol for their own gain, and Leia does not begrudge the people of the galaxy for this selfishness. It is easy for her to identify with their strife, although just at the moment she cannot afford extraneous empathy.

She was given the address for a brothel. Certainly not one that is frequented by senators and other diplomats; they had a tendency to call for their pleasure slaves anyway, as they had the means and didn't wish to be discovered in a tawdry dalliance below the elite levels of Coruscant. This worked in Leia's favor, as no one would recognize her. She was new, a fresh face, and hadn't yet been on the HoloNet enough to be recognized.

She enters in a side door with a keycard she had been given two days prior. Walking down a dimly lit hallway, she hears voices - in the throes of passion, by the sounds of it - and continues on her way to a small office at the end of the corridor.

A hulking shadow sits in one corner, a half-consumed bottle of Bothan port open and fragrant amidst the stench of sex and sweat hanging in the air. The figure doesn't move; Leia cautiously steps forward.

"I knew you would come" a steady tenor voice says slowly. "Forgive me, but this place seems beneath you. You are still royalty, despite the destruction of your homeworld."

Leia practically moans with relief. It really was him. "I was told that you had been killed. No one survived Rogue One."

The man moves into the light. Half of his face is raised in angry scars and even some open wounds, his lip fixed in a permanent snarl much like Vader's when his helmet had first been removed. Shedding his cloaks and armor, the man before her is slight; almost too thin. His skin is a sickly yellow color; likely a lifelong consequence of being exposed to the radiation emitted from the Death Star's super weapon. Suddenly, Leia feels ill.

"And do you believe everything that Mon Mothma tells you?"

"I suppose not" Leia mutters, sitting down opposite Captain Cassian Andor. "Are you the only one?"

"As far as I know" he acknowledges. "But there may be others. Of course we wouldn't know about each other even if there had been. I have no memories of my evac. My instincts tell me that no one else made it."

"For what it's worth, I'm happy that you did."

An uncomfortable silence befalls them. Leia pours herself a drink and downs it; Cassian chuckles.

"You're uncomfortable."

"You have no idea" Leia shoots back. "Do you know how many beings I've sent to their deaths? I can never repay you for what you did. For what Rogue One did."

Cassian sits back, twisting the glass of port in his hand. It too is scarred; the movement obviously pains him. So many sacrifices for their cause, and he still wanted to speak with Leia. The thought is unconscionable to her, that a man could be so loyal.

"Killing Darth Vader would be a start."

Leia sucks in a breath, realizing that Cassian's loyalty to the cause was not a part of this conversation. What he was asking was far more dubious. Leia's feelings about her father were not as ambiguous as Luke's; she felt that he could never rise above the horrors he created, but the thought of his death made her uncomfortable for reasons she couldn't identify.

"I won't stand on ceremony. How do you know about that?"

Andor shrugs. "Don't shit where you eat."

"What in the hells does that mean?"

"It means maybe don't bring a murderous Sith lord to Yavin and expect people not to talk. Or be curious enough to see for themselves."

Cassian is known for his gifts toward espionage; it wasn't out of the realm of possibility for him to have somehow found out about Vader and gone to see for himself. His life's work had been subverting the Empire and its eventual destruction; the question remained: how had he known?

Leia isn't one to make rash decisions, but putting this obviously pained, hollow man out of his misery and maintaining the secret of Darth Vader's survival didn't seem like something entirely out of the question.

"Where were you when the Death Star was destroyed? How could you have found out this information?"

Cassian pours another drink for them both. "Mon still had a use for me when I became well enough to travel. I was hiding on Kashyyk and received a heavily-encrypted transmission. Of course by then, everyone knew that the Death Star had been destroyed. Evidently, your brother" he takes a measured sip of alcohol, wincing at the pain it doubtlessly causes to swallow "had been fool enough to inform her immediately that Vader was in his custody. She hired me to follow them, so I did."

 _Luke._ His godsdamned penchant for complete honesty was enraging. Leia leans back, clearing her drink in one gulp and pouring another. Andor watches her, amused.

"Perhaps Mon didn't realize that telling me he was your brother would lead me to some potentially costly conclusions."

The hair on the back of her neck raises. "You would be wise to keep that information to yourself. Luke acted of his own accord, he -"

"Saved the life of the galaxy's most tyrannical villain. The reason why my operation on Scarif fell to the Death Star; the reason I will be disfigured and in pain for the rest of my life. You can imagine why this information is important to me. People died to stop him, Leia. Don't be the reason he is allowed to continue."

"If you had tracked them to the full extent of your abilities, you will know that Vader aided the Alliance greatly. He killed Grand Admiral Thrawn."

"That does not absolve him, and you know it. I won't waste your time or mine, so here is my proposition: kill him. Kill him before knowledge of your father's true identity destroys your life, and the lives of those you love. Do it in remembrance of all of those who died fighting for the cause."

It isn't that Leia believes Vader should live; far from it. But a new, strange hesitance raises its ugly head and causes her to second-guess herself. Cassian picks up on this, slowly rising to his feet.

"You have two standard days to make your choice before I alert the Senate. Once I do, he'll be dead within 72 hours. Your place in the Senate will be dissolved; you will likely die a traitor. Perhaps that's what the galaxy needs; a cleansing."

Leia can't bring herself to stand. She knows that Andor is right; she knows that allowing him to live, even if he doesn't use his abilities and persuasions to steer the galaxy back toward evil, that no one would forgive her this trespass. It would mean death for all of them; even Luke. Even Han.

"I will send you a message" she utters. "I'm sorry, Cassian. You have to understand; Luke needed him. Does need him."

"The question you need to ask yourself" Cassian states coolly, lighting up what smells like a spiced cigarra "is whether or not _you_ need him. I'll be around."

Leia turns around to rebuke that assertion that she needs Vader at all, but Cassian is gone. She waits for what seems like an excessive amount of time passes before she exits the brothel and finds herself standing in the now-darkened streets of the lower levels. Sending a second message to Han to alert him of her imminent arrival, she takes the plain-looking speeder back to their apartments.

He's staring at her balefully when she walks in the door, ensuring that she's keyed the code to lock it behind her. They stand for a moment, on some precipice of truth and deceit, for some time before Han speaks.

"I made tea" he says weakly. "Figured you could use a relaxing night. I heard about the bill's failure; I'm sorry."

Leia sighs taking the piping hot cup from Han. They move to the sitting room; she sits beside him, Han throwing a protective arm around her shoulder. His grip is too firm, too plaintive. He must know.

"I've got contacts too" he says after they've had their tea, a silence like the electricity in the air before a storm suddenly culminating in the crash of thunder and sideways sheets of rain. "I knew Andor was still alive. I had a feeling he'd come to Yavin, but I had no idea Mothma would want him anywhere near because of Vader's survival. That stupid farmboy managed to bite off more than he can chew."

Leia is loathe to disagree with him. "Setting that aside for the moment, I just spoke with Cassian. He says that he'll go to the Senate with the truth if I don't have him killed."

"You might as well kill Luke too if you do that. Listen, Andor is a good man. Was a good man, maybe, before this war tore him to shreds like everyone else. You can't trust him."

The thought is unconscionable. She has always carried an immeasurable amount of respect and reverence for Rogue One, their mission, and what it cost them to deliver the plans safely to the Alliance. Then again, Cassian Andor was part of a splinter faction of the Alliance, a fanatical pocket of warriors mobilized to bring about the destruction of the Empire by whatever means necessary. It is obvious that Cassian still believed in this, still lived that reality even after the Emperor's statue in the Imperial Square had been brought down by ecstatic citizens. The Empire was nearly extinct entirely; Leia still receives transmissions from Mon, updating her regarding the tremendous success of the Alliance in the Outer Rim and beyond.

"I can't trust him, and that's why I hesitate. Even if Vader is killed, he'd have more leverage against me than I'm comfortable with. You should have seen him, Han. He's a shadow of who he was before; scarred and destroyed by the Death Star. He lost everything in the name of the Alliance, and he'll do what he can to see that no one is made to suffer the way he did."

Han looks into Leia's eyes. There's desperation, loneliness, exhaustion. The will to fight seems gone. For a moment this scares her, but then she realizes: the man she loves has fought her her too. They all have. Cassian, Luke, even the Togruta Ahsoka Tano. All of them have fought and bled and sacrificed for her. Does she owe them the insurance of taking Vader's life, or can she give Andor the kiss of death as a final act of mercy? Does she deserve her Senate seat, her designation as a war hero? Does any of it matter, with Darth Vader still alive?

Is he truly Vader anymore, or is he something else?

"This is the fallout of war" she begins, a script to which she has clung to for years in times of low morale and the absence of hope. "Sometimes, we must make impossible choices to safeguard our future. Luke needs Vader to right the wrongs he committed against Luke himself. Not the galaxy, not the Jedi, not even our mother. I cannot take that from him. I will not."

Han nods slowly in understanding. "It's death either way."

She has to protect her family. Han understands this. He understands more than a rough-and-tumble smuggler should ever understand; the choice before her, why it's being made. He hates what Vader did, but this new individual who rose from the smoldering ashes of an iconic onyx suit of armor is not Vader. Killing him would accomplish nothing but to foment additional conflict; Leia considers that the Senate would find out regardless. It is a reality she is willing to accept and contend with when it happens, but not a moment before. Cassian represents the raw, premature passion of a resistance buried in the ruins of Jedha's Holy City.

"I'll make some calls" Han says, snapping Leia back to the present. "When?"

"Now" she hears herself say, as if in a trance. "It has to be now. Check the lower levels. He'll probably go deeper to wait for my word."

Never had she thought that she would ask Han what she had so many Alliance operatives before him. It births a hatred in her, but only for a moment. A bitter irony fills her mouth with the taste of lead as she sends him on his way.

"Give him an honorable death, Han. He deserves that much."

As Leia Organa watches Han Solo walk out of their senatorial apartments, something like devotion pulls on her heart.


	13. squeeze, constrict (yet close the maw)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Darth Vader struggles with emotions he has swallowed for twenty years as he visits Naboo, and Padme's final resting place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FINALLY. It took me an inordinately stupid amount of time to complete this chapter. Life really got in the way for a while, but I'm back!
> 
> Thank you so much to all of those who have read and commented!

Several Standard years ago, in a fit of what Vader believed had been demented nostalgia, Emperor Palpatine had decreed that Empire Day be held on Naboo. It was such a surprising and unprecedented backhand swipe at protocol that the Emperor's chief advisers had wound up maimed for speaking out against the sovereign's wishes; only Sate Pestage had remained, and while Vader himself had been ostensibly in the Outer Rim commanding the Fleet in a surge against rebellious planetary government on Ryloth, he had also been searching for Luke at the time. The Emperor's odd whims had neither surprised nor alarmed him, and he left the Sith Lord to his own devices despite having clear feelings about the decree. That, and any extended conversation about Naboo would always lead back to Amidala. Vader had already calculated considerable risk in attempting to find Luke, but to rip open the wound that was Padme would have earned him open disdain on top of Palpatine's existing frustrations. The second iteration of the Death Star had saturated all of their discussions with a thickness and opacity Vader could scarcely tolerate, and even he understood the need for its completion but loathed the endless meetings and relentless (and often impossible) deadlines he was bade to enforce. Their first attempt at the superweapon, and its first string of failures until its ultimate demise, had left the Emperor weakened so that Empire Day on Naboo was the final throes of something like comfort amidst it all.

He had found a reasonable excuse to extend his mission on Ryloth, though whether or not that thinly-veiled justification even entered the Emperor's mind as a reason to berate him remained ultimately unclear. It's not that he hadn't known that facing Padme's death would have colored the entire week-long celebration and cast a pall over Vader's precarious and admittedly mercurial mood, but neither did Palpatine care for his commandant's emotional comfort during that time. That was the first time he had considered just killing the old man outright, Rule of Two be damned. Palpatine had always been Vader's protector with far greater frequency than most realized - certainly more so than had been the case in the reverse. His presence had not been missed that year. It was the first and only such occasion on Naboo, and perhaps it had been another of the Emperor's tests. Whatever the case, Vader had been all too pleased to abandon the Emperor's right hand to spare himself the torment.

Now, there was nowhere to hide.

Without his telltale armor and infamous helm, Vader looks like any scarred refugee; even still, that he is _here_ is dangerous. He can taste it on the tip of his tongue.

Luke is dressed in simple civilian attire but insists that his lightsaber be visible; even if it had not, they would still have had to stop every ten meters. Vader watched as Luke humbly collected accolades from Nubians who had seen him on the HoloNet as the lauded hero of the Alliance.

If only they knew who walked alongside him. Vader felt like a prized nerf, dead and strung up on a pike, paraded through town like a trophy kill. He swallows the sudden and irrational anger, as no one knows his identity and Luke introduces him as one of the Alliance operatives with whom he worked. He evades questions about their reasons for being on Naboo; he tells them that his work is never done, and that is why he is here. The Sith Lord wonders at the craftiness of his son; he does speak politics and maintains an appropriate distance from the public. He remembers having done so himself, another lifetime ago. To see it in his own son, and to see him collect that adulation for destroying the Empire he had built, was abjectly dizzying.

The tomb was, as it happened, situated on the far end of the Lake Country - another locale in which Vader's memories were, to his horror, still vividly intact. This is where his immature and petulant vision of Padme had become a harsh reality, their marriage and its subsequent upheaval more of a condemnation than a joy. His love for her had been suffocating, demanding; and he knows these things, knows that he had wanted and selfishly needed her to depend solely upon him and their love, such as it had been, to sustain them through the darkest days of the Clone Wars.

Ahsoka asked a lone fisherman for directions, and he enthusiastically drew a crude map for them to follow. He tells them that people still go to the tomb to honor the late Queen and Senator; at least, those who are still alive after the Empire to mourn her. Vader's heart surges with something parallel to regret.

"I think it is best if I do not go further" Vader rumbles to Ahsoka and Luke's backs, as they have walked in front of him a handful of paces. He tells himself that it is habit which causes him to hover behind them, ensuring that they are not followed by some invisible and non-existent assailant. The probability of their continued safety is quite high, but Ahsoka and Luke only trade knowing glances and allow Vader his brooding silence.

The two Jedi stop, Luke's shoulders slumping. "I'll go ahead" Ahsoka says, straightening her jacket against the slight wind picking up from across the lake. Above them, the Nubian maples' yellowing leaves rustle, seemingly in agreement. The cobbled pathway before them has wound to the entrance proper of the long, winding path toward the Nabarrie tomb. Strewn along their path shortly after they had encountered the fisherman lay several wreaths of a curious flower Vader cannot identify. Myrtles, perhaps. They were fresh as well, and likely renewed by mourners and celebrants of their once and beloved Queen's life. The tightness in Vader's chest becomes almost unbearably uncomfortable.

When Ahsoka is out of sight, Luke turns. "I can't imagine how this must feel."

Darth Vader sighs, looping his thumbs through his belt out of habit. "Whatever I may feel is immaterial, although your reasons for coming here are admittedly elusive to me."

Luke takes a steadying breath. "I need to know that going to Ahch-To is what you want. I need to know that you aren't Sith. Coming here, seeing your reaction to being faced with what you did, tells me all I need to know."

Anger, abrupt and bright, takes the place of the anxiety clogging Vader's lungs. Even still, he holds fast and irons out any potential aggression in his voice. "What have you concluded as a result of my behavior?"

Luke folds his arms across his chest. "You're scared. I can feel it. Afraid of what you will experience when you're met with the reality of her death. What it meant."

The Sith nods. "An intuitive response, and one with which I cannot argue. Still, the question remains: what did you hope to accomplish by coming here? You were raised by Owen and Beru; Leia by Breha and Bail. What is here that you so desperately need? She - my wife - is ash. Dust."

Luke shakes his sandy blonde head. "No, she was the _reason_ for your Fall. And honoring her is the reason you will come back. You've avoided complicity by allowing the business of the Empire, and the business of turning me, to consume you. But when you found me, somehow you knew that you'd have to face the reason for why you fell to the Dark Side. Padme - mother - was that reason. Your love for her overshadowed everything else; even your being a Jedi Knight."

The Sith reels. His son is both correct and subsequently wise beyond his years. Of course, the young Jedi had no prior knowledge of Palpatine's offer when Vader first Turned; it would have been impossible for him to know. What he did know was that his mother was somehow involved, and Vader hadn't considered that his request to come to Naboo wasn't about mourning a mother he never knew.

"Forgiveness is a laughable concept in light of all that I have done, Luke." His jaw crunches as he steps forward, Luke watching him. "Come. I will tell you about her." Obediently, the younger Skywalker falls into step with his father.

Their pace is neither plodding nor quick; Vader finds himself lost in tales of Padme's bravery on Naboo against the Trade Federation when she was fourteen. He tells her about their decision to get married, and his pursuance of her; and how she had rejected him several times. The fear that gripped him in the night when he dreamed of her death during childbirth. Her idealism, her duplicitous nature (which wasn't altogether negative, being as how she was a public servant above all else fighting against corruption), and her aversion to bureaucracy. He tells his son, with no small amount of embarrassment, of his initial assessment of his mother upon their first meeting.

Luke laughs in the failing autumn sun. "An 'angel', father? Really?"

Vader can't help but chuckle himself, though he knows it is a mirthless sound. "Yes. I was, hm, _sentimental_ by anyone's standards, let alone for a slave."

"She must have been beautiful."

"Yes" Darth Vader softly acquiesces. "She was."

As their conversation dwindles, the entrance of the Naberrie tomb looms before them. It is an open structure, more of a gazebo, but the remains interred around the raised dais in the middle are of the lesser nobility of the family. In the center, locked in a simple whitewashed stone vault, lie the remains of Padme Naberrie, former Queen of Naboo and Senator of the Galactic Republic.

Vader, arguably for the first time since being liberated from his suit, feels his breath catch.

Luke looks at him then, his gaze dropping to Vader's right hand. He doesn't understand the reason for his son's hesitance; perhaps he doesn't know what to say either, especially after hearing so much about his mother. The only sounds are gentle waves lapping up against the granite columns down below.

"You could put them on top of the vault" Luke offers quietly.

_Put wha-_

Vader looked down at his gloved hand. The white flowers from alongside the path along the shore were clutched in his black-gloved fingers, the ends where the buds still held on to their stems for dear life slumping slightly. He can only imagine how he looked; he couldn't even remember picking them.

Stepping forward, Darth Vader places them underneath Padme's name, etched into the masonry. He passes an ungloved hand over them, the edges of his mouth tugging as his fingertips graze the letters. His wife. Had he killed her? Palpatine's word was not to be treated as truth in that regard, and even if she hadn't died by his hand, then his dreams during her pregnancy had been a current of warning in the flow of the Force.

"My appreciation for your mother was sinfully sparse, and admittedly entirely selfish. I never respected her work; if it did not occur on the front lines, it didn't occur at all toward the war effort. I will go to my death shameful of this. My love was - incomplete."

Luke shakes his head. "She wouldn't have wanted to you live with that regret. If she is half as lovely as you have described, I believe that she would have even forgiven you."

Forgiveness is not a word that has dwelt in Darth Vader's lexicon in two decades. 'Mercy' is probably more apt, as he preferred fear as a vehicle to perpetuate obedience, but mercy allowed him some magnanimity among his subordinates. They had needed that; Padme had been the first to suffer his mercy.

Ahsoka materializes as conversation wanes between Vader and Luke. Her lekku flutter anxiously, and Luke essays an expectant expression before Vader suddenly realizes why his former padawan seems on edge.

"You sense danger" he rumbles. The Togruta nods hesitantly.

"Not unique to our presence, but not blameless. With half of Theed knowing that Luke is here, it might embolden any Imperial sympathizers to act rashly."

Luke's eyes are closed. "No" he mutters. "No. It's not here. It - Coruscant." His eyes snap open. "Leia" he breathes. "Father, when we left Yavin, did you relay anything about our course to her?"

Vader nods. "To Mon Mothma, yes. Per our agreement that she be notified when we were en route to Ahch-To."

As soon as the words leave his mouth, he feels like an infant. When a Sensitive being is as physically compromised as he is, there are missing elements of one's connectivity within the Force. Precognition was a gift he possess prior to Mustafar, but with the immense trauma to his cerebral cortex from the lack of oxygen he suffered, processing the waves emanating from the Force took him longer than one who possessed sound physical health - like Luke or Ahsoka.

"My Lord" Ahsoka turns to Vader apprehensively "I believe Mon Mothma may be conspiring to -"

Vader holds up a gloved hand, the tomb and their sentimental errand forgotten. "If she has put into motion any plot that would accomplish my demise, she will fail."

Luke's shoulders slump. "Let's not get hasty. I felt that _Leia_ was in danger; we need to contact her."

Turning away from the tomb proved a surprisingly difficult errand for Vader. He cast one last glance over his shoulder - there would be no reason to return here again - and stopped. Luke and Ahsoka were several paces ahead of him, but Vader could not will his legs to propel him forward.

Ahsoka nudges Luke, and together they turn to see Vader, seemingly frozen in time. The Sith Lord opens his mouth to speak, but no words follow; a surge in his chest causes his breath to catch. His vision blurs and his limbs feel as if they are made of lead. In this moment, Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith, is certain that he is dying.

If Luke or Ahsoka had known he was crying, they didn't mention it on the walk back to the landing pad. Vader himself had not recognized that physiological response until their ship was in sight, but he was loathe to admit it. Still clinging to his identity as Sith, it was difficult for him to recognize certain responses to emotional stimuli - especially since this response was the result of feelings he had not experienced in twenty years. That Luke had _wanted_ to see that from him was a kind of sadism all its own, but their new Jedi Order could not suffer the residual cruelty of Darth Vader. He cried for Padme, certainly, but in truth he had loved her in another lifetime; her dry bones would not absolve him of all that had happened in the years following her death. He did not recognize the Anakin of back then; and that bothered him. No, it was not expressly _for_ Padme that he cried; it was the grief of a new beginning, reconciling his Sith teachings and rediscovering the ancient Jedi religion he had spent the latter years prior to his Fall in vociferous opposition. He was, quite simply, being torn in two.

By the time they returned to the ship, Luke went to the cockpit to send a transmission to Leia. While they waited for further word, Ahsoka began taking stock of the equipment on board. Vader watched, helplessly, still reeling from his experience at Padme's tomb.

"We'll need supplies. We took what we could from Yavin, but resources were limited."

Vader nodded half-heartedly. "The Alliance expounded more resources than they could reasonably resupply fighting the Empire. What do you suggest?"

The blue-skinned Jedi shrugs. "I don't want to borrow trouble. The further into the Outer Rim we get, the more dangerous this could be. Governments are still unstable, and Luke isn't exactly a backwater farm boy anymore. Attracting unwanted attention is the last thing I want to do."

Vader arches an eyebrow, suddenly coming to. The supplies they do possess are enough to sustain them at least for a standard month on Ahch-To, and all three of them were capable pilots enough to perform supply runs as needed. Darth Vader reached out across the Force to touch Ahsoka's mind; to his surprise, she consciously allowed it. The first thing he sensed was fear.

"Is there more" he rumbled "which you did not tell me about Mothma's negotiations?"

Ahsoka looks down at the rations and blaster pistols and tools scattered across the tabletop, shoulders hunched, eyes glassy. "Yes" she finally admits after several beats.

Vader waits, silently. This is an admitted throwback tactic from when he was tasked with challenging unproductive Imperial officers during the second Death Star's construction, and it had been consistently successful. Give them their own noose with which to hang themselves, and the truth would be revealed besides. However, Ahsoka was obviously bereaved and concerned regarding whatever Vader's Force promptings had reached, and he had sensed many weeks prior that Mothma was greatly conflicted regarding allowing the Sith to live. In truth, he had expected her to act on that conflict; but their informational meetings became more amiable, and he never sensed duplicity.

Finally, Tano looks at Vader. "Do you remember the Rogue One outfit?"

Vader takes a steadying breath. "Of course. Their mission was successful in leaking the plans for the first Death Star and delivering them to the Alliance."

She pushes herself from the table and sits down opposite Vader. His posture is casual, almost - long legs outstretched, crossed at the ankles. His infamous light saber hangs from his belt, replaced after their sojourn through Naboo. She notices that the scarring on his face is not as dramatic; the wiry muscles of his arms have filled after adequate nutrition ingested in the normal way rather than by a feeding tube in a helmet. His skin was not as pallid and drawn; he had some color, although one who beheld him for the first time may think that he had been ill with some grievous sickness for some time and was finally becoming healthy again. He regards Ahsoka with patience, understanding; perhaps a hint of danger lurking somewhere beneath it all, but its malice was not directed at her. She feels at ease with him, a comradely togetherness they had certainly not enjoyed on Yavin but had found somewhere between their discussion in the cave on Yavin and their collective journey to the tomb.

All of these things make it easier to tell him, quietly, "I believe that Mon Mothma wanted to know our whereabouts because she is planning something. I'm not sure what, but I sense that its intent is nefarious. I overheard her speaking with someone named Cassian; a little research revealed that he is the only known survivor of Rogue One's mission to Scarif."

Scarif. Vader sniffs and shakes his head. "It was one of the Death Star's initial weapons testing sites. Or at least, that is how it was presented to the Senate. Only myself and the Emperor knew that Rogue One had been successful; the late Grand Moff Tarkin had fired on the Citadel, but the transmission had reached the Alliance already. I had been told that all Rebels on world had been subsequently killed."

"This Captain Andor is a tough, militant bastard. I read his file; a highly accomplished assassin with a kill count to match; and after Scarif, he also has a vendetta - not to mention radiation sickness after surviving the Death Star's destruction of the Citadel. I wondered if Mon mobilized him against you as a favor - but he can't simply find and kill you."

"Mon Mothma must play a political game. Allowing me to live puts her reputation and the galaxy's faith in the Alliance in jeopardy; I have known this since the beginning. It is Luke's naivety and his notoriety that have kept me alive this long."

Ahsoka leans forward conspiratorially "I don't like it. Why would she have agreed to exile you to Ahch-To only to kill you?"

Vader uncrosses and recrosses his legs, folding his arms over his chest. "Such bargains were struck with frequency whenever the Empire managed to locate and capture high-level Alliance operatives. It is meant to lull them into a false sense of security so that when the long arm of justice did in fact catch up to them, they would be caught unawares."

Ahsoka sits up ramrod straight. "Is that what you had intended to do to me?"

"No" Vader utters quietly. "It is not. You were - different."

The former padawan is struck speechless. She hadn't expected her one-time master to offer pearls of truth in such a time; in fact, she was surprised that he was resigned as he was to this new information. It wasn't much of a stretch to imagine that Mothma had employed similar methods of bargaining; Darth Vader hadn't exactly been entirely committed to the idea of going to Ahch-To, and had seemingly taken it as a way to escape the wrath of the Alliance. Of course there would be those with personal vendettas against the most dangerous man in the known galaxy, but for what he could continue to provide to the Alliance, it would make more sense for Mothma to retain him as both a prisoner and informant concurrently.

Then again, Mon Mothma was a practiced politician and decorated war hero. She had made ruthless decisions for the promotion of the Alliance's cause; and, were she to find herself pressed to do so, could make similar decisions even after the defeat of the Empire. Vader understands this; had himself, on several occasions, made similar choices when his own officers had been captured. Their continued survival would have meant that invaluable information remained alive and ripe for the taking; he would not be incensed in the slightest, and indeed would expect, Mothma to make an identical choice. Most assuredly when it came to him.

Finally, Vader uncrosses his legs and sits straighter. "Mon Mothma is prodigiously efficient. I sensed no perfidy during our meetings, but she would perhaps have fallen under the influence of others who knew of my presence on Yavin and took umbrage with my continued survival."

"That isn't fair" Ahsoka mumbles. This surprises Vader; a brief flash in the Force momentarily gives him pause, but he presses forward. They can discuss their reconciliation at a later date; for the moment, there were more important matters.

"There is nothing fair about war. You know this. And you know, and at one time believed, that taking my life would be just recompense for what I exacted upon the galaxy. Mon Mothma is, as I had done during the Emperor's reign, doing her duty."

"But you had an agreement with her."

This is an accurate statement, and one which vexes Vader. Agreements are struck and broken; this is the way of war and politics. When Mothma afforded him a convincing illusion of freedom, he grabbed hold of it only for Luke's sake. He believed it only because of Luke.

"I am inclined to believe that it was never Mothma's desire to allow me to go to Ahch-To. My identity at Sith was expressed on Yavin during several of our meetings; she would have been foolish not to hold me to account."

Ahsoka sighs. "Then why the pretense?"

Darth Vader looks at a distant point over Tano's shoulder. "Luke. Leia. They do not understand the dark side; they do not know what can be gleaned from its power. Luke does not realize that Ahch-To will _begin_ our work - and that, in order for the Jedi to survive, there can be no return to the ways of our Order. I do not expect Mothma to know the ways of the Force, or understand the need for redefining the Jedi; and the Sith, for that matter."

The twilek nods slowly, eyeing Vader dubiously. "I suppose you believe that there must be some kind of marriage of light and dark. I'll grant you that this is bigger than Mothma realizes, and if she has put a hit out on you - "

Vader cuts her off, prosthetic hand gliding through the air with a grace belying the machinery under the synthetic skin. "There can be no other way." The Sith's tone indicates that the conversation is over; that his is the final word on the subject, and although he knows Ahsoka will debate that point, they both know that he is correct. It's an uncomfortable concession, but one which lands between them, feather light, and Vader senses a warm amber comfort. Tano understands.

Luke walks into the bay just then, his face a few shades paler than usual. Vader raises an eyebrow expectantly.

"Leia says that she was approached by a Rogue One survivor who was tasked with your assassination." He doesn't meet Vader's eye; can't, perhaps. "I had to encrypt the channel so many times over I'm certain that traffic has been noted here. We need to leave."

Ahch-To is, for the moment, out of the question. Neither Ahsoka nor Vader ask for additional clarification; there is no need.

"We have to go back to Coruscant" Luke says, his eyes fixed on a horizon Vader cannot see as they both slip into the pilot and co-pilot bucket seats, respectively.

"Why?" Vader gently probes. He knows the answer, but Luke must admit the truth.

"I worry that the news of our parentage will impact Leia's ability to serve in the Senate. If what the assassin said is true, he will come forth with the truth of who you are and that you're alive."

"Why would this be an unsatisfactory outcome?" It is meant more as a probing question - bait for what Vader hopes will be a specific response. Luke can undoubtedly sense that he is being tested, but his own skills aren't honed enough to realize this. Vader doesn't want to manipulate the younger Skywalker - quite the opposite - as Luke's focus on their ultimate goal has been significantly swayed by Leia's recent news. The Sith does not fear for his life, as Force-blind assassins were often utilized by the Empire out of raw need. Killing him would require someone who understood their opponent intimately - not an Alliance operative with nothing but a grudge to driving his actions.

Luke is aghast. "Think of the political ramifications! Think of the millions of beings who will cry out for justice if this information is leaked! Search your feelings, father." He doesn't realize, Vader things, that he's using one of the very phrases with which he had plead Luke to do the same in Cloud City.

"I have" Darth Vader says, his voice stronger and more stentorian than he meant for, but its effect was quieting against Luke's palpable misgivings. "I have."

The younger Skywalker's eyes are wide. Shocked, he asks "Then what do you suggest?"

"We draw out the assassin. Question him. If my assassination was at Mon Mothma's behest, then killing him would be the worst course of action. We must learn his true motives, apart from his acceptance of his contract at the Alliance's behest."

Luke scoffs. "Revenge, obviously."

Vader remembered _Rogue One_. Most of all, he remembered pouring over each of their personnel files, stolen from the Alliance and paid for by the blood of several of his own assassins, and being impressed with their tenacity. With their ingenuity. It's why he didn't try especially hard to secure the plans again; it's why his siege of the Alliance transport was performative, though far from heartfelt.

"Then we go to Coruscant" Vader finally says. Ahsoka wordlessly goes to the cockpit, presumably to set the coordinates in the navicomputer. Luke stares at his father, wide-eyed, in that moment still a farmboy from Tatooine. Darth Vader recognizes the awestruck star-drunken wonder of a boy who had seen the galaxy for the first time, and for what it truly was.

"There must be more to this" he says, finally, his exhaustion plainly displayed in his voice. The towering Sith lord nods.

"This is part of the foundation of our new Order. Purging the old; collecting pieces of the past to smelt them, forge them into a future different than what we had perhaps imagined."

En route back to Coruscant, Vader pulls one of the white-belled flowers he had kept hidden in his sleeve, and sets it gingerly on the bed in his small, cramped cabin aboard their borrowed freighter. He looks at it for what seems like an eternity, face on his knuckles, elbows on his knees, as they careen through hyperspace barreling toward yet more of his past he wished he could forget.

Perhaps death is not as much of a punishment as recollection. As he drifts into a fitful sleep, he can feel auburn curls slide in between his fingers, and a laugh which sounds like the peals of a bell.


End file.
